


Speeches 



May 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




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SPEECHES 



OF 



THE STUMP, THE BAR, AND THE 
PLATFORM 



BY i/ 

Charles Sedgwick May 



REVIEW AND HERALD PUBLISHING CO., 

Battle Creek, Mich. 

chicago, ill. atlanta, ga. toronto, ont. 

V. 




^\i-5 



45^14 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1899, by 

CHAS. S. MAY, 

In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D C. 










CONTEMPORARY VOICES. 



As a lawyer, advocate, and orator, Governor May stands among the 
ablest in Michigan and the Northwest. His eloquence is fervid and 
convincing, and his English pure and flowing. — Representative Men of 
Michigan. 

As a citizen he is heUl in the very highest estimation, and his public 
and private life is as spotless and pure. His integrity is of the highest 
type, and his legal education is of the finest and most accomplished 
order. He is regarded as one of the finest orators in the Northwest. — 
The Michigan Sun. 

Hon. Chas. S. May is a speaker of national reputation ; a writer of 
dignity, force, and precision ; a lawyer in the front rank of his profes- 
sion in this State; a jurist of singularly clear and lucid mind. — Detroit 
Evening Ne7vs. 

Hon. Chas. S. May is a prominent member of the Detroit bar, and 
has a State reputation as an advocate. Some of his efforts in the courts 
of Michigan are pronounced remarkable exhibitions of eloquence and 
power. He is a gentleman of fine address, and whenever he appears 
before a jury, he is sure to have a large audience. Among his forensic 
efforts are several worthy of mention, such as his argument in the 
famous Pierce will case ; argument before the supreme court to compel 
the regents of the university, by mandamus, to establish a chair of 
homeopathy; argument in the .Sullivan murder case; address before 
he law department of the State university, entitled "Trial by Jury;" 
^eulogy upon the late Charles Sumner : and his centennial lecture on 
Patrick Henry. — New York Graphic. 

Mr. May is an able lawyer, a fine speaker, and a gentleman of high 
character. — Chicago Tribune. 

The glowing eloquence of the latter part of the speech carried the 
audience like a resistless flood. Governor May already enjoys an envi- 
able reputation as one of the most eloquent orators in the Northwest. 
He is not a ranter, hut his soul flows out in the highest strains of fervid 
eloquence, which captivate the multitude. — Detroit Tribune. 

Hon. Chas. S. May responded for the delegation, in one of the most 
stirring and eloquent speeches to which we have listened in a long time. 
His manner was earnest and impressive, with a ready flow of language, 
and when referring to the affairs of our country, he was really sublime. 
In his allusion to the oft-repeated remark of New England's being left 
out in the cold, he burst forth in unsurpassed eloquence that was 
responded to most enthusiastically. No report of Governor May's 
speech could but fail to do him the greatest injustice. — Portland (Me.) 
Daily Press. 



4 CONTEMPORARY VOICES. 

We print elsewhere an address, delivered yesterday before the graduat- 
ing class of the law school of Michigan University by Hon. Chas. S. May 
on the jury system. Mr. May is one of the ablest independent thinkers 
of the West. — Chicago Times, 

The crowd proceeded to the fair-grounds, where Hon. Chas. S. May 
addressed them for two hours in one of the most eloquent and convinc- 
ing speeches ever made by him. The address was eloquent, earnest, 
powerful beyond description, and surpassed even his Cleveland speech. — 
Detroit Free Press, 

No pen can describe the grandeur of his vivid and thrilling eloquence, 
r his magnificent final appeal to the jury to remember their duty to 
God, to law, and to society. In terms the strongest in the language did 
the brilliant orator inveigh against the traffic which had so much brutal- 
ized Sullivan. We can not describe the effect of Governor May's ora- 
fory, not only on the jury but on the spectators. Breathless attention 
was given by the squeezed and packed throng, who had that afternoon 
an intellectual treat such as is not often experienced in a lifetime. — 
Flint Democrat, 

Governor May's speech created the most unbounded admiration from 
all who heard it, for the clearness and force of its argument, as well as 
for its elevation of style and felicity of expression. In grandeur of 
sentiment and eloquent enforcement of principle, it was worthy of the 
great cause in whose behalf it was pronounced. Governor May is 
entitled to stand in the very front rank of orators in our whole country, 
and such a speech as he made the other night would have added to the 
laurels of many of our public men, who for statesmanlike elotjuence and 
ability have long since attained to a national reputation. — Ex- Congress- 
man Geo. Willard, in Battle Creek Journal. 

The man whose distinguished abilities have received such wide recog- 
nition, for whom the opposition votes in two Michigan Legislatures have 
been cast for United States Senator, and who is conceded to lie one of 
Michigan's ablest and most Ijrilliant orators. — Kalamazoo Daily Gazette. 

Of Hon. Chas. S. May nothing could here be said which would not 
be a repetition. His name has for many years been a household word 
in every home in Michigan, and a synonym for all that is brilliant and 
dignified in political oratory. — Kalamazoo Daily Herald. 

Mr. May is an exceedingly attractive speaker, of medium size and 
height, keen eyes, dark brown hair and mustache, deep, strong, musical 
voice. He speaks easily and fluently, warms with his subject to a bright 
glow of oratory, with a peculiar fire of earnest and impressive delivery 
which is singularly effective with juries. He has long been a leading 
advocate in Michigan, and is very prominent as a political and platform 
orator, whose speeches and addresses attract unusual interest. — Modern 
Jury Trials and Advocates. 



CONTENTS. 



Pace 

Pro-Si. AVKRY Outrages in Kansas . . 7 

Trle AM) False Success . . . -27 

Sustain the Govern mexi ... 42 

Speech at Portland, Maine . . 67 

Union, Victory, and Freedom • . . 71 

The Trial of Republican Institutions . . 100 
The Caucus System : Its Abuses and Their 

Remedn . . . 117 

Speech ro Repuiu.ican Staie Convention . 127 

Speech at Unveiling of Soldier's Tablet . 129 

Liberal Republicanism \^indicaied . . 131 

Charles Su.mner : A Eulogy . .163 
Remarks at the Funeral of Dr. S. B. Thayer 199 

Argument in Supre.me Court . . . 206 

Trial i;y Jury .... 244 

The Farmers' Movement . . . 285 

Patrick Henry : A Centennial Lecture . 316 

Argument in Pierce Will Case . . ^57 

Reform and Honest CiovERNMENT . 385 

Speech at Burns Banoi^et . . 433 
The Legal Suppression of ihe Liquor Traffic 442 



EXPLANATORY NOTE. 



It is proper to state that the author of these 
speeches has not availed himself of the customary- 
right of revision in such cases. These selections 
from his work of thirty years are here given in their 
chronological order, and as delivered and first pub- 
lished. No attempt has been made to adapt or mod- 
ify them to new conditions or opinions, or to take 
them out of the spirit and circumstances of the 
times which brought them forth. If this method 
leaves them with any blemishes or imperfections, 
it certainly should add to whatever historical value 
they may possess. 



PRO-SLAVERY OUTRAGES.' 



Mr. President and Felloiv Citizens: 

You have wisely chosen to celebrate this day in a 
manner befitting its most precious memories. Eighty 
years ago to-day our Revolutionary fathers pro- 
claimed from Independence Hall the great truth, 
which has just been repeated in your hearing, that 
''all ))ien are created equal, and endowed by their 
Creator with certain unalienable rights, diVC\ong which 
are life, liberty, and the pnrstiit of happiness." 
These words were as true centuries ago as they were 
when the pen of Jefferson inscribed them on that 
immortal instrument ; and to-day they have just as 
much of significance, and just as much of hope for 
down-trodden and oppressed humanity, this wide 
world over, as when they startled the security of 
British tyranny in 177f>. Truth never dies ; and 
truth alone, next to its great Author, is worthy of 
the lasting homage and admiration of mankind. W'e 
have assembled to-day to render unto Truth the 
things which are hers. Not as sectionalists, not as 
partisans, have we come, but as truly patriotic Amer- 
ican citizens, who love our country, and our whole 
country, and who, because we love her, would make 
her free. 

What signifies it for the American people to set 
apart one day out of the three hundred and sixty- 

' Delivered at the Anti-Nebraska celebration at Battle Creek, Mich., 
July 4, iS5(). Mr. May was then twenty-six years of age, and one of 
the political editors of the Detroit Trilnnu. 



8 PRO-SLAVERY OUTRAGES. 

five to make special boast of their liberty when the 
slaves who groan in bondage on our soil outnumber 
the free population of these States when the Consti- 
tution was adopted ? What signifies it for us to sing 
annual paeans of rejoicing over the downfall of British 
tyranny eighty years ago, when we have this very 
day in our own midst a tyranny ten times as rapacious 
and grasping as that which our fathers struck down 
in the seven years' war of the Revolution ? What 
were stamp acts, and a tax of three cents a pound 
upon tea, to the damning outrages which we have 
seen perpetrated under this tyranny in Kansas ; to 
the trampling under foot of the ballot-box ; to the 
gross usurpation of legislative powers ; to the enact- 
ment and attempted enforcement of statutes such as 
never have secured obedience among civilized men ; 
to the wanton destruction of private property ; to 
the flames of burning villages and the blood of 
unprovoked murder, which fill out the blackened 
catalogue ? My friends, we do well to think of these 
things to-day. And there is no treason in this. We 
are not traitors to our country, because we see her 
faults and her dangers, and seek to amend and avoid 
them. Rather are they traitors to the highest and 
holiest interests of this nation, who, with lip service 
to patriotism, and loud professions of devotion to 
freedom, assist, through the ballot-box, in maintaining 
the supremacy of a despotic oligarchy, which is as 
sure, unless speedily checked, to work our political 
ruin, and overthrow our free institutions, as the 
night is to follow the day. 

We honor this day and our Revolutionary fathers 
who have made it immortal in human annals, when 



PRO-SLAVERY OUTRAGES. 9 

we seize upon it as a fitting occasion to inspire a 
deeper regard for the rights of man, and an intenser 
hatred of tyranny and wrong. We can best keep in 
fresh and everlasting remembrance the patriots ot 
our Revolution by catching from their heroic exam- 
ple the spirit and the courage now necessary to 
defend and protect the glorious legacy which they 
left us. 

My friends, it is idle to conceal the fact that our 
country is in danger ; that our liberties are threat- 
ened — not by a foreign foe, but by an enemy which 
has sprung up in our own midst. , I know that it 
has been the custom of alarmists in all our past 
political struggles to proclaim dire evils and calam- 
ities as sure to follow the defeat of this or that party. 
Men have heard this so many times, and it has grown 
so familiar to their ears, that they do not now fully 
realize the terrible significance of a true warning. 
But not without foundation have predictions of com- 
ing e\il been made in the past. When Texas was 
annexed, it was a true warning which proclaimed it as 
an evil-boding calamity to the country. When the 
Fugitive Slave Law was enacted, it was not a false 
prophet who discovered an indication of national 
demoralization and future danger in that measure of 
iniquity. When ruthless and treacherous hands 
struck down the Missouri Compromise, and removed 
the protecting a^gis of freedom from a broad and 
beautiful territory, it was no false fear which filled and 
oppressed all our hearts. To-day we are on the eve of 
the consummation of the worst calamities which have 
ever been predicted for our country, and I firmly be- 
lieve that we are now in the midst of a crisis whose 



10 PRO-SLAVERV OUTRAGES. 

issue shall determine the question whether liberty or 
slavery shall be the great central idea and animating 
principle of this government. What a question for the 
American citizen ! Eighty years ago our fathers, plant- 
ing themselves upon that immortal declaration which 
has been read to-day, and appealing to the God of 
battles for the rectitude of their motives and the 
strength of their cause, bravely contended, against 
fearful odds, for civil and religious liberty, and 
through fire and blood bequeathed that liberty as an 
inestimable birthright to their posterity ; and now, 
before the grave has closed over the last soldier of 
the Revolution, we are called upon to decide the 
momentous question, whether liberty or slavery shall 
be our future portion as a people ! To point out 
some of the causes which have worked such fearful 
results, to glance at some of the steps which have led 
us to so great dangers, and to indicate the path 
by which we may return to peace and safety, let 
this be the object of my present discourse. 

When at the close of the Revolutionary war our 
fathers had conquered a peace and secured their 
independence, a feeling of mutual interest, depend- 
ence, and gratitude induced the formation of a league 
between the various colonies — ^ whose temporary 
union in the struggle with the oppressor had pro- 
duced such glorious results — to last for all time, and 
to form the basis of the new government which they 
were establishing. That league was the present 
Constitution of these United States. Slavery then 
existed in most of the colonies. It was an unfortu- 
nate inheritance from colonial rule, dating back to 
the earliest settlement of the country. It naturally 



PRO-SLAVERY OUTRAGES. 11 

constituted one of the chief embarrassments in the 
organization of the new government. Our fathers 
clearly saw and felt the inconsistency of their posi- 
tion in establishing a free government for themselves, 
based upon their own great declaration of the inher- 
ent rights of all men, while they were holding a large 
proportion of their population in abject bondage. 
But although they saw and felt this, there appeared 
to them no immediate remedy for the wrong. While 
some favored direct emancipation, others, and much 
the larger number, did not deem this expedient 
or safe. The country was exhausted by the long 
struggle for independence ; it had no more than 
strength sufficient to meet the absolute and necessary 
demands incident to a new government, and it could 
not bear the shock of a universal and immediate 
emancipation of all the slaves in the colonies. This 
was the reasoning that prevailed ; and the framers 
of the Constitution resolved to make slavery no part 
of the new government, no common interest of the 
confederacy, but leave it to the discretion and the 
humanity of the States in which it existed. Upon 
this principle, and with the full understanding that 
it would soon give way before the expanding 
influences of freedom, the Constitution was adopted. 
I'^or the truth of this assertion I appeal to the 
debates in the convention which framed it, to the 
writings of Washington and Jefferson, and other 
Revolutionary patriots, and to all the contempo- 
raneous authorities of that period. This is history ; 
and it were as useless to deny it as it would be to 
deny that there was a battle of Bunker Hill or York- 
town. I do not design to weary you with historical 



12 PRO-SLAVERY OUTRAGES. 

details. I have glanced thus at this subject because 
the enemies of freedom loudly demand, while they 
do everything to extend it, that slavery be left where 
the Constitution left it. Here is where the Constitu- 
tion did leave it. At the time of the adoption 
of that immortal instrument, the American flag 
nowhere floated over a single foot of slave territory 
belonging to the Union. Nowhere was slavery 
defended upon principle, but everywhere, both at 
the North and the South, it was freely admitted to 
be a great moral and political evil. Southern men, 
without contradiction or reprehension, frankly uttered 
sentiments in the Constitutional convention and the 
first Congress of the confederacy, which, if repeated 
now in either house at Washington, would subject 
their authors to the fiercest denunciation as rank 
Abolitionists and plotters against the Union. By 
this simple fact we may gather an idea of the im- 
mense distance which we have wandered from the 
early paths, and the great and portentous demoraliza- 
tion which we have suffered as a people. 

It would be, in many respects, an interesting and 
instructive process to inquire into the causes which 
have conspired to produce such a change of senti- 
ment at the South — which have turned the slave- 
holding States from the declared opinions and policy 
of their early statesmen to the present warm defense 
of slavery as an institution, and persistent demand 
for its extension. But I can not do this without 
extending the limits of this discourse beyond my 
design. I therefore turn from this branch of the sub- 
ject with the remark that supposed pecuniaty interest 



PRO-SLAVERV OUTRAGES. 13 

has been the chief element in working the remark- 
able demoralization to which I allude. 

I pass over, also, a detailed account of the various 
political aggressions which slavery has made in the 
government. These are known to you all. You all 
remember what slavery gained by the Missouri Com- 
promise, in the aquisition of Florida, in the annexa- 
tion of Texas, in the passage of the Fugitive Slave 
Law, and finally what it seeks to gain by the gigan- 
tic villainy of the Nebraska bill, and the kindred 
outrages under it. I propose to go behind these 
aggressions and these outrages, 'and show how they 
have been perpetrated, and who is responsible for 
them. The South is a political minority in this gov- 
ernment ; the South has not done these things alone. 
No, my friends, we of the Northern States, possess- 
ing as we do. and always have done, a political ma- 
jority and a numerical preponderance in the govern- 
ment amply sufficient to control and give character 
to its actions, have suffered these things to be, and 
are therefore, before man and heaven, justly respon- 
sible for them. 

Until the recent outrages in Kansas, slavery has 
always pushed its aggressions under the forms of law. 
It has been able to do this by first obtaining a com- 
plete control of the federal government in all its 
departments. When I say this I do not mean to be 
understood to say that the offices of the govern- 
ment have been filled exclusively by Southern men ; 
although they have been thus filled to an extent 
greatly out of proportion to the relative population 
of the two sections of the Union. But I do mean 



14 PRO-SLAVERY OUTRAGES. 

to say that a Southern influence, a pro-slavery in- 
fluence, has pervaded every branch of the govern- 
ment. Does any man dispute this .' Tell me, when has 
slavery failed to use the government as an engine 
to secure the political power which it has coveted ? 
When has it suffered defeat in any struggle in Con- 
gress before the second day of February, 1856 .•* 
Certainly it was not when the Missouri Compromise 
was adopted, when Texas was annexed, when the 
Fugitive Slave Law was enacted, when the Nebraska 
bill was passed. And now I ask the question : Who 
at the North has been, whether wittingly or unwit- 
tingly, in complicity with the slave power in its 
repeated aggressions upon the Constitutional rights 
of the free States ? Who has furnished it the strength, 
without which it would have been powerless for the 
consummation of this great mischief? The so-called 
Democratic party — the party which to-day with one 
hand clutches at the throat of Kansas, while with the 
other it unlocks the treasury at Washington — can 
answer the question. For twenty-five years the 
slave power has found a ready and obsequious ally 
in that party. Through its agency all the later 
aggressions of slavery have been effected. Its votes 
extended slavery through the annexation of Texas. 
They assisted in provoking the Mexican war, a war 
which, however much of true patriotism and heroic 
courage it may have evoked, had no other real object 
than the acquisition of territory over which to extend 
the curse of human bondage. They secured the en- 
actment of the Fugitive Slave Law, which now dis- 
graces our statute books, and makes it a crime to 
indulge the noblest impulses of humanity. They 



PRO-SLA\ERY OUTRAGES. 15 

tore down the great bulwark which our fathers reared 
to protect a fair and beautiful territory situated in the 
heart of the continent from the unnumbered evils 
and woes of human slavery. Aye, more than all 
this ; that party is to-day in conspiracy with the slave 
power to force slavery upon the people of Kansas by 
a series of outrages which, for atrocity, find no par- 
allel in the history of civilized man. For proof 
of all these charges I appeal to the record. Tell me 
if all these acts of aggression which I have named 
have not received the sanction of that party. Tell 
me if it is proposed, by the Cincinnati platform, to 
redress a single one of those great wrongs which 
have drawn the sympathizing eyes of Christendom 
upon Kansas, or avenge a single drop of that inno- 
cent blood which now cries in vain to heaven, from 
her soil, for vengeance upon her oppressors. How, 
then, can the responsibility be escaped ? 

And here let me say, that although I arraign the 
Democratic party as a political organization, and 
fasten this guilt upon it, I would by no means be un- 
derstood to charge all its individual members with 
an equal participation in the crime. I have no doubt 
that thousands of as honest and truly patriotic men 
as ever belonged to a political party have acted with 
this organization in all this record up to the Nebraska 
bill. But there I stop. My charity is not expansive 
enough to embrace those who approve of that meas- 
ure of iniquity and all the outrages which have buen 
committed under it, except on a plea of ignorance 
so broad as of itself to constitute a confession of 
guilt in such a land as this. I will not indulge in such 
a wretched misnomer as to call him a patriot who 



16 PRO-SLAVERY OUTRAGES. 

seeks to wrest from my brother in Kansas every right 
which I hold dear. Charity is indeed a virtue of rare 
excellence ; but it ceases to be a virtue at all when 
sullied by falsehood. 

I have thus glanced at the most powerful agency 
by which the slave interest has been able to push its 
encroachments in the past, and by which it now 
seeks to consummate the most daring and infamous 
measure which it has yet attempted. But while by 
the landmarks of history and the transactions of the 
present I am able to trace these great wrongs to the 
door of the Democratic party, I will not pretend to 
deny that other political organizations in the coun- 
try, while they may have been guiltless of sharing in 
them, have not been sufficiently moved by them to 
a just indignation. My friends, are we not all more 
or less guilty upon this head ? It is not strange, how- 
ever, that we have failed fully to apprehend the dan- 
gers which have resulted from these successive en- 
croachments of slavery. We have been loath to 
believe that a power existed in the Republic so heart- 
less, so tyrannical, and so grasping as the slave power 
has shown itself to be. It was not until recently 
that that power tore off its disguise, and revealed to 
us its frightful and hideous proportions. When the 
Missouri Compromise was struck down in the very 
face of plighted public faith, and in spite of our earn- 
est and loud remonstrances, our eyes were opened, the 
spell was dissolved, and we saw the monster at full 
view and in his true character. Henceforward our 
hearts shall be fired and our arms shall be nerved to 
rescue not only Kansas but our common country 
from his grasp. 



PRO-Sr.AVERY OUTRAGES. 17 

My friends, let us pause here and survey our true 
condition. This is the fourth of July, 1856, the 
eightieth anniversary of American independence. 
The world is looking at us ; let us look at ourselves. 

We are the only people on the face of the earth 
who claim to recognize fully the great principle of 
republican equality ; and^ yet every fifth man among 
us is a slave ! Our Declaration of Independence pro- 
claims to the world the great fact of the social and 
political equality of all men ; and yet we sell our 
brother from the auction block ! Our Constitution 
declares that it was ordained to establish liberty ; 
and yet the whole influence of the federal govern- 
niLHt is being wielded to uphold and extend slavery ! 
The most glorious page of our history is that which 
records the struggle of our ancestors against British 
tyranny ; and yet the history which we are writing 
to-day will record for the everlasting condemnation 
of future ages, a tyranny far more odious than that 
which nerved their arms to opposition ; a tyranny 
consisting not simply in extortionate taxation, and 
exercised over no mere dependence across the ocean, 
but one which seeks to force slavery into a virgin 
territory, in the very heart of our country — a terri- 
tory inhabited by those who were but yesterday our 
neighbors and fellow citizens. In an age of light and 
knowledge such as never dawned upon the world be- 
fore, when not only science and art are being carried 
to new heights of improvement, and the human intel- 
lect is penetrating the hidden mysteries of nature, 
but when the moral being of man also is becoming 
educated to the great truth of the common brother- 
hood of the human race, and is taking on the fresh 

2 



18 PRO-SLAVERY OUTRAGES. 

inspiration of a new humanity, we are prostituting 
the powers of a government which should shed an 
elevating and beneficent influence on mankind, to 
secure the extension of a barbarous system such as 
prevails nowhere else in Christendom. Are you civ- 
ilised men ? I show you here, in your own country, 
an institution whose parallel can not be found 
among Turks or Algerines. Are you friends of hu- 
manity? I show you your brother, robbed of his 
manhood and made a beast of burden in your fields, 
a piece of merchandise in your shambles. Are you 
good citizens f Here is a system which not only 
wars upon every principle which we hold dear as 
freemen, but threatens the existence of the Republic 
itself. Are yoji CJiristian men f Here is heathendom 
revived in our midst ; here are its bloody altars dark- 
ening the fairest portion of our land. How long shall 
these things be .-' 

" Hoarse, horrible, and strong, 
Rises to heaven that agonizing cry, 
Filling the arches of the hollow sky, 
How long, O God, how long I " 

But while slavery has made its aggressions upon 
freedom, and secured its triumphs through the 
agency of the federal government, it is not alone 
upon our law-makers and law-executors, upon our 
congressmen and our presidents, that it has exercised 
its potent and corrupting influence. It has not 
waited until our senators and representatives have 
arrived in Washington, but it has penetrated to the 
very firesides of our homes, and poisoned Northern 
public sentiment at its fountain-head. In various 
ways, and, as it were, by an infernal talisman, has it 



PRO-SLAVERY OUTRAGES. 19 

been able to coil around the minds of Northern 
freemen chains as strong as those which bind the 
limbs of its own bondmen. How shall we account 
for the paradox exhibited by Northern men who are 
constrained to admit that slavery is a great political 
evil, and yet vote without murmuring for its exten- 
sion ; who confess it to be a sin in the sight of heaven, 
and yet hold, without remonstrance, the closest rela- 
tions of Christian fellowship with those who practise 
and defend it ! Who stands up here at the North to 
defend slavery upon principle .-• — Not one in ten 
thousand. Then how is it that through our votes it 
receives the strength which enables it to secure ter- 
ritory and power which justly belong to freedom and 
to us } What infernal spell is here .' What has 
closed our eyes to self-interest, and paralyzed our 
political conscience .'' What has steeled our hearts 
to the noble impulses of humanity, and made us in- 
sensible to crime, and outrage, and suffering .' What 
has poisoned the fountains of our religion, and made 
our pulpits dumb over wickedness so great as to 
rival even hell itself.'' Surely here is a great wrong, 
out of which has grown a gigantic inconsistency. 

My friends, within the past few weeks we have 
been furnished with fearful evidence of our own 
humiliation, and of the tyrannical and grasping 
character of that power at whose feet this govern- 
ment lies to-day. At the federal capital, in a cham- 
ber consecrated to freedom and hallowed by glorious 
recollections, a noble senator has been stricken down 
by the hand of ruffian violence for pleading the 
cause of justice and humanity ; a senator, the simple 
virtues of whose private life excite our admiration 



20 PRO-SLAVERY OUTRAGES. 

and command our respect scarcely less than the 
varied accomplishments and the splendid eloquence 
which adorn his public career. And he was the rep- 
resentative of Massachusetts, the glorious old com- 
monwealth which rocked the cradle of American 
liberty ; whose gallant sons were the right arm of our 
strength in the struggle of the Revolution ; whose 
soil drank the first blood of the conflict, and is still 
illustrated by the fields of Lexington, and Concord, 
and Bunker Hill ! Such a man, representing such a 
State, is cloven down in the Senate of the Union — a 
place which should be guarded by the aegis of the Con- 
stitution, as the flaming sword of cherubim guarded 
the gates of paradise ! It v^z.^freedoi)iof speecJi which 
was borne bleeding and wounded from that Senate 
chamber in the person of Charles Sumner. He spoke 
bravely and eloquently for truth and humanity. He 
spoke unwelcome truths in the ear of the slave power, 
and for this he was stricken down. He was not merely 
the representative of Massachusetts. He spoke for 
you and for me ; he spoke for right and freedom. 
My friends, is there nothing in this to stir our blood .' 
Must such things be.? Shall we quail in base sub- 
mission, and suffer such outrages to go unrebuked ^ 

" Shall ruffian threats of cords and steel, 
The dungeon's gloom, the assassin's blow, 
Turn back the spirit roused to save 
The truth, our country, and the slave ?" 

No ; by each spot of haunted ground 
Where freedom weeps her children's fall ; 
By Plymouth's rock and Bunker's ground; 
By Griswold's stained and shattered wall; 
By Warren's ghost, by Langdon's shade ; 
By all the memories of our dead ; 



I'RO-SLAVERV OUTRAGES. 21 

liy their enlarging souls which burst 

The hands and fetters round them set ; 

By the free Pilgrim's spirit nursed 

Within our inmost bosoms, yet ; 

Hy all above, around, below, 

Be ours the indignant answer,— No 1 

On our Western frontier the sky has been reddened 
by the flames of burning villages, and lawless out- 
rage has stalked abroad at midday. A patient and 
long-suffering people, guilty of no crime but that of 
loving liberty better than slavery, have been invaded 
afresh by armed ruffians from a neighboring State, 
and their territory laid waste by fire and sword. 
Previously robbed by usurpation of their legal rights, 
a war of extermination is now being waged against 
them. And why is this ? Why is this people thus 
persecuted and outraged .-' Let the answer mantle 
the face of the boasted civilization and humanity 
of this country with shame. They are thus out- 
raged because they love liberty, and seek to make it 
the corner stone of the political edifice whose founda- 
tions they are now laying. For this offense they 
suffer. For this, the lawless Missouri bands and 
their allies have, by a series of invasions, brought 
calamities upon them only paralleled by the ten 
plagues with which God visited the ancient Egyp- 
tians. For this the whole South have conspired 
against them, and resolved upon their submission or 
their destruction. For this, when they have called 
upon the president of the United States for that 
assistance which it was his sworn duty to render, 
they have been met with threats of fresh insults and 
still more humiliating subjugation. In the extremity 
of their danger and their suffering, they have ap- 



22 PRO-SLAVERY OUTRAGES. 

pealed in vain to Congress to redress their griev- 
ances ; they have in vain implored the interposition 
of the federal arm to stay the tide of aggression 
which was pouring over them. 

My friends, let us suppose for a moment that the 
people of Kansas were thus overrun and outraged 
by a savage tribe instead of American citizens — by 
Indians instead of Missourians. Who believes, then, 
that their condition would not excite the anxious 
sympathy of the whole country ? Who believes, 
then, that we should hear any cry against " Emigrant 
Aid Societies".'' Who believes, then, that the fed- 
eral troops would be ordered to take sides with 
the savages against their own countrymen ? W'e 
know well that three weeks would not pass over our 
heads before armed men enough would appear in 
Kansas to sweep the last North American Indian 
into the Pacific Ocean. And has it come to this .'* 
Must American citizens suffer without succor or re- 
lief, outrages at the hands of Missourians and South 
Carolinians, which, if committed by Sioux and Paw- 
nees, would stir our blood and nerve our arms to just 
vengeance .'* Where, in God's name, is our boasted 
liberty and our sympathy for the oppressed, when 
we stand by and see freedom of speech, of the press, 
of the elective franchise, trampled in the dust, and 
our own fellow citizens ground down beneath the 
iron heel of such a tyranny .-' Are we freemen 
ourselves .-* 

But, fellow citizens, there is somewhere a remedy 
for every human wrong ; and although our govern- 
ment is thus guilty, and thus false to its early promise, 
the path by which we may return to justice and safety 



PRO-SLAVERY OUTRAGES. 23 

is easy and plain. Our political system furnishes us 
with the remedy for all these wrongs. In other 
countries where different systems of government pre- 
vail, national wrongs and national sins, when they 
become unendurable, are generally purged away 
through the fiery ordeal of revolution. This was the 
case in France at the close of the last century, when 
the vices of a long line of voluptuous and tyrannical 
kings had piled up a mountain of oppression and 
wrong, such as human nature could not longer bear. 
The nation rose to arms as one tiian. and in the 
frenzy of its indignation trampled in the dust not 
only the throne but all civil institutions and re- 
straints, nor stopped in its career of madness and 
blood until it felt the mighty arm of Napoleon guid- 
ing its helm of state. We, too, need a revolution ; 
but, happily, it may not be a revolution of blood. 

" We have a weapon firmer set. 
And better than the bayonet; 
A weapon that comes down as still 

.\s snowflakes fall upon the sod, 
Vet executes a freeman's will, 

As lightning does the will of (lod.'' 

This mighty weapon is at our hand. We have 
only to use it, and the work is accomplished. Slav- 
ery has waged its aggressions upon freedom, as we 
have seen, through the agency of that government 
of which you and I are a part. To stay its further 
advance, it is only necessary that the freemen of the 
great North, constituting, as they do, not only the 
moral strength but the political majority of the 
Republic, should speak out through the ballot-box 
an emphatic and decided protest. The immediate 



24 PRO-SLAVERY OUTRAGES. 

admission of Kansas into the Union under her Free- 
State constitution will dry up forever that prolific 
source of troubles and dangers which has been 
opened in that Territory, and dispel those impending 
clouds of civil strife which now darken the Western 
sky. A simple Congressional prohibition will pro- 
tect all our Territories and vast unoccupied domain 
from the evils and woes of human bondage, and 
check the further progress of slavery on this conti- 
nent. These objects accomplished, and the rest will 
be easy. Freedom will resume its supremacy in the 
government. 

How, simple then, is the remedy for these great 
wrongs of slavery ! How plain is the path by which 
we may go back to the lost fountain of justice and 
freedom ! To the work of regeneration which lies 
before us we are called by every motive of patriot- 
ism and every impulse of humanity which can reach 
the heart of man. Do we love our country — this 
glorious land of hope and promise .'' Then by that 
love which attests us true and loyal citizens, let us 
rescue her from the destroyer's hand. Do we recog- 
nize a common brotherhood in the human race .'' do 
we believe that God made of one blood all the na- 
tions of the earth ? Then by that belief which proves 
our own humanity let us lift up our wronged and 
outraged brother to his rights of which he has been 
robbed, — to his manhood which has been degraded. 
We contend not alone when we thus seek to accom- 
plish such noble and beneficent objects. History lifts 
the curtain of the past, and reveals to us a noble 
army of heroes and reformers hastening to our assist- 
ance. 1< rom every burning stake where martyrs have 



I'RO-SLAVERY OUTRAGES. 25 

laid down their lives for truth, — from every battle- 
field where heroes have bled for liberty, they come. 
Voices of encouragement call to us from out the sky. 
Washington, and Adams, and Jefferson, and a host of 
worthies who won our freedom, and have ascended 
themselves to the perfect freedom of the just in 
heaven, bend over us with words of hope and cheer. 
They point us to their own trials and sufferings, to 
the battle-fields of that glorious struggle in which the 
Republic had its birth, and implore us to rescue that 
great cause, for which they periled all, even life itself, 
from danger and reproach. They bid us be strong, 
as they were strong, in the hour of decisive trial. 
They unfold to our view the mighty future- with its 
teeming millions, its vast interests and great events, 
and call upon us to guard the tree of liberty, whose 
germ they planted eighty years ago, that it may 
finally overshadow with its wide-spreading branches 
all the nations and tribes of the earth. 

I will not indulge a doubt or a fear as to the final 
issue of the struggle between freedom and slavery in 
this country. Through the clouds and the darkness 
which now envelop us, do 1 already catch a view of 
the glorious sun of liberty, shining still in its ancient 
splendor. 

" Lol a cloud 's about to vanish 

From the day: 
And a bra/en wront; to cruiiil)le 

Into clay. 
Lo! the right's about to conquer; 

Clear the Way! 

It can not be that the hopes born in our struggle for 
independence are about to be turned into a fearful 



26 rRO-SLAVERV OUTRAGES. 

mockery, while yet they inspire the bosom of man- 
kind. It can not be that this noble edifice of free 
government, — noble still, in spite of its defects, — 
which has been reared on the shores of this new 
world, is about to crumble and perish from the sight 
of men. Where, then, on the face of the earth, would 
its walls be rebuilded .'' Where, then,;, would its like 
be uplifted to the anxious gaze of a doubting, strug- 
gling world ? No, no ; it can not be. By that great 
law of progress which governs the human race, it can 
not be ; by the unfailing promises of God, it can not 
be. Upward, Upward, through all the ages ; 
UPWARD still, is the progress of humanity. Free- 
dom shall triumph in this struggle. This glorious 
land upon which nature has lavished her choicest 
gifts shall be its home in all time to come. Here 
shall its altars be ; and from these shores shall go 
forth to the ends of the earth its ennobling and 
beneficent influence. Let us rouse ourselves then 
for the contest. Let us fight as those who feel the 
inspiration of truth, and rejoice in the assurance 
of triumph. This is — 

"Our last great b.ittle for the right. 
One short, sharp struggle to be free! 
To do is to succeed; — our fight 
Is waged in Heaven's approving sight. 
The smile of ("md is victory." 



TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS/ 



Gentlemen of the Aliimjii : 

This is your annual literary and social festival, the 
season of return to Alma Mater for a {q\v days' enjoy- 
ment of old friends and old memories. It is a pleas- 
ant occasion, and marks another wayside rest in the 
journey of your lives. The good mother has opened 
wide her arms to receive and welcome you ; your 
eyes again look out upon once-familiar and long-to- 
be-remembered scenes, and youT hands feel again 
the warm grasp of old and not untried friendships. 

At such a time nothing is more natural than that 
you should meet the eager inquiries from friends, 
*' Have you been prospered the past year } " " Have 
you been succcssficl ?" I know not what reply you 
have made or would make to these questions, but, as 
your orator to-day, I wish to put a question which is 
before all these, and which involves them all : What 
is success? What is true, and what \s false f 

If we look out into the world around us to-day, we 
shall see men all intent upon one great, absorbing 
life object ; and this, in each individual case, is called 
success. It is around and upon this object that all 
the activities of life circle and center. It is the 
thought b)' day and the dream by night. There is a 
very strong tendency to this exertion which is born 
with us, and society stimulates it and feeds it and 
fans it by magnifying the prize, and measuring us 

' An address delivered before the Alumni of Kalama/oo College, 
June 18, 1862. 

27 



28 TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS. 

by its possession. Of course there is no uniformity 
manifest, except in the end to be attained. While 
this, in a certain sense, is the same to all, the paths 
and processes by which it is reached differ as widely 
as human avocations are diversified and human aspi- 
rations are various. But while there is an almost 
endless variety in the means used by different indi- 
viduals to secure this common object, in all cases 
the character is shaped and the life is controlled 
by it. 

At the threshold of this discussion I meet the 
question, What is a proper measure or standard of 
success .■* This question is not confined in its scope 
to mere outward or worldly success, but goes to the 
root and philosophy of the whole subject. Men's 
ideas upon this matter may be very superficial, and 
their standards may be false ones. I am not seeking 
now to find what men call success, but to ascertain 
what is a true success, what is a real prosperity. It 
seems to me that there are two views to be taken of 
this subject, or ways of looking at it, which, as we 
ado[)t the one or the other, control our actions and 
our conduct with reference to it. The one view I 
would call the outwanU or purely material, and the 
other the iincard, or spiritual, view. Right here is 
the point of divergence in the paths which men fol- 
low. The one path is followed by the great mass, 
who look simply to the accomplishment of material 
objects and results ; the other by the philosophic 
few, who entertain a more enlarged and exalted con- 
ct'ptif)n of the duties and responsibilities of this mor- 
tal life of ours. 

The outward, or material, view, which is the popu- 



TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS. 29 

lar one, has reference only to the attainment of cer- 
tain given worldly objects or results ; as, for instance, 
the accumulation of property, or the securing of pub- 
lic station. It looks to the compassing of these ends 
not so much as it affects the individual himself, but 
as to its effect upon the public estimation of the 
individual. It is almost wholly governed by outward 
appearances and popular prejudices. This is also 
the purely selfish view. In this country, and in 
these times, the great, practical standard of this 
kind of success is the acquisition of property, or 
material aggrandizement. The world has a way — 
a harsh and false way — of measuring men simply by 
these outward results and appearances ; and as almost 
everybody, as it would seem, is in pursuit of money 
as the chief object and end of life, we have come into 
the practise of limiting the standard to success in 
making money. Of course, I am speaking here in 
general terms. Society does not, it is true, fail to 
pay some respect to achievements in other depart- 
ments of human exertion. But it is not such achieve- 
ments that excite the general emulation of the com- 
munity, and call out the strong efforts of the masses. 
Very few men, comparatively, are toiling nowadajs 
for ideal excellence in their callings, or for simple 
reputation or fame. It is presumed that many who 
seem to do this have an eye to the main chance, and 
seek to fill the swelling trumpet that it may blow 
a golden fortune in their path. At all events, a good 
many of our famous men do not seem to be at all 
impervious to the seductive influence of money. 
Now. not to dwell upon this point, it must be 
granted that the great mass of men around us are 



30 TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS. 

earnestly engaged in pushing what they deem to be 
their temporal fortunes ; in other words, engaged in 
earning or getting money and accumulating property. 
Up to a certain point, of course, this becomes a ne- 
cessity, in order to provide for constantly recurring 
wants, and to keep the world moving ; but beyond this 
the argument of necessity ceases, and we open into a 
broad field of moral inciuiry. The question comes 
up, When a man has provided for present needs and 
future contingencies, in other words, has secured 
what we call a competency, is he justified in taxing 
his intellectual and physical energies in still further 
accumulations.' And if he does thus tax his powers 
and amass wealth, has he achieved a true or a false 
success? Has he attained a real or a fictitious pros- 
perity ? I am speaking now of a man who hoards up 
wealth for wealth's sake, and not of one who acquires 
that he may distribute again for benevolence or com- 
merce. There are rich men who use their vast pos- 
sessions for the public good. Such do not come in 
for my censure. Rut where you will find one Gerrit 
Smith or Peter Cooper you will find a hundred Astors. 
My friends, it seems to me that any man who has 
looked out upon our societ)' and our boasted modern 
civilization, and stopped to reflect upon this subject ; 
to view it and philosophize upon it in the light of 
conscience, of revelation, and of a hereafter, must be 
impressed with the conviction that the wide-spread 
and inordinate love of gain, which we see on every 
hand, amounts to a fearful public malady and mad- 
ness. When a man loses the poise and balance of 
his faculties, and does things unwittingly which are 
against the public interest, and especialh' against his 



TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS. 31 

own, we call him insane, and shut him up in a mad- 
house. How less insane is a man who has permitted 
his love of money to grow till it has overshadowed 
and swallowed up his whole moral nature, and whose 
whole life has become a perpetual war upon his own 
highest and best interests .' Is not the man, who, for 
the mere sake of hoarding up unneeded gains, sacri- 
fices his own comfort, violates his conscience, de- 
frauds his neighbors, and blasphemes his Maker, 
worse than insane ? Is he not a moral suicide ? 

Such a man lifts his own hand, not against the 
poor body which must soon die and pass away, but 
against his own imperishable aqd immortal soul, 
which must carry these self-inflicted wounds into the 
presence of his final judge. It is not for earthly 
tribunals, nor for finite justice, to fix the penalty for 
such deep turpitude. 

I do not decry riches or rich men ; both, in them- 
selves, may be well. But I believe with Lord Bacon 
that " great riches have sold more men than they 
have bought out," and I believe the same great au- 
thority announced the true rule of moderation and 
of wisdom in the injunction, " Seek not proud riches, 
but such as thou mayest get justly, use soberly, dis- 
tribute cheerfully, and leave contentedly." Riches, 
like everything else which is given us here, have their 
uses. But as every other thing can be abused, so 
can they. It is in the fearful abuse of these boun- 
ties of earth and gifts of Heaven, that we are derelict 
and criminal. 

In the business world, when a man has lost a cargo 
on the ocean, become involved for a friend, or in any 
way become unable to meet the demands of his 



32 TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS. 

creditors, they take his sign down, turn him out- 
doors, and pointing their finders at him, say, " he has 
failed.''' Some, more humane than the rest, will pity 
him as unfortunate. What has this man lost .^ — Lost 
his money, lost his lands, lost his bonds and mort- 
gages ; lost the accidents of his life, that is all. He 
may turn away from his closed store or counting- 
room, from the broken wrecks and rubbish of his 
business, and cross his threshold to meet a loving 
wife and affectionate, dutiful children, whose society 
is above all price, and which the sheriff can not sell, 
nor his creditors attach ; he may even feel a great 
burden rolled from his shoulders, and take up some 
new work ready to his hand, and with an honest 
heart and cheerful face go on in the way of duty to 
his family and his Maker. Such men there are ; such 
men I have seen, and so have you. 

But what shall we say of this other man, who has 
not lost his money, nor his goods, but who, in making 
more money and more goods, has lost his conscience., 
lost his i)itegrity, lost his human sympathy ? Has he 
failed .'' The world calls him successful, and envies 
him. His credit is good, he has large possessions. 
No matter though his home is but a gilded prison, 
where he tarries scarcely long enough to sleep and 
to eat, and is never irradiated by the sunny smiles 
of his children, nor sanctified to him as the scene of a 
husband's or a father's social joys and duties ; no 
matter though he toils after his sordid gains till his 
poor body can scarcely bear the weight of his greedy 
soul ; no matter though he denies himself such little 
comforts and conveniences as even the poor enjoy ; 
no matter though he turn away the hungry from his 



TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS. 33 

door unfed, and the naked unclothed ; no matter 
though he wrings unrighteous gains from orphans, 
and "devours widows' houses," — the world calls him 
prosperous, and envies him. 

You have seen such a man, too. I can not but 
regard him as unfortunate. He has lost nearly every- 
thing that is worth having. He may not know it, 
and the world may not recognize the fact, but Jic has 
failed ; failed, too, in the worst sense. I have some- 
times seen such a wreck. I have seen him in the 
counting-room, in the street. I have seen that eager 
and sordid countenance ; that grasping right hand, 
with no sympathy in its money-calloused palm, and 
those soulless, calculating eyes, which stare at you 
as coldly as two pieces of coin. That was once 
a man. Years ago, when he w^s young, he had 
human sympathies and a conscience. But he went 
into business, — went into it as most men do, with the 
idea that he must make money and be rich, and after 
years of toil and labor, beginning in honest enter- 
prise, but soon lapsing into doubtful bargains, and 
at last culminating in pure greed and unconscionable 
extortion, he has come to be what we see him. 

Now this man has been through a natural and 
a common process. He has been through the school 
of the world, and if he has developed fast, and grad- 
uated early, it is because he has proved an apt 
scholar. 

I can not but regard such a man's career as the 
most lamentable and ghastly of all human failures. 
While he has carried selfishness to its paradox, and 
has failed in the largest measure to himself^ he has 
failed also to his family, to society, to the state, and 



34 TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS. 

to his God. Not one single purpose of his being has 
been answered. Better for him and his race had 
he never lived. Born into a world of beauty, of 
sympathy, of noble opportunities and exalted activi- 
ties, endowed with an immortal nature which shall 
outlive the stars and endure eternal with God, he has 
prostituted his best faculties to base purposes ; he 
has repressed his nobler impulses, and chilled and 
frozen his human sympathies ; he has denied his 
obligations to his fellow men, and withdrawn himself 
from the human brotherhood ; he has made mer- 
chandise of his opportunities, and coined his activi- 
ties into gold ; he has piled up his possessions till 
they have shut out the sunshine from his path, and 
thrust a clod of earth betwixt his soul and heaven ! 
It is a relief to turn now to the other side of the 
picture. It is pleasant and consoling to know that 
human nature does not altogether abound in such 
misdirected energies and such misshapen characters. 
There are noble and true men whose lives point 
us to the higher and better way. There are men who 
use the world as not abusing it ; who do not look 
forever downward to the earth beneath their feet, but 
upward to the stars above their heads ; who drink 
in the whole deep import and philosophy of human 
life ; who welcome its duties and its responsibilities, 
and keep their souls ever fresh and young, and 
attuned to the mysterious, though melodious music 
of this unfathomed and unending existence. How 
noble and how true to the higher interests of an 
immortal nature appears that grand old man on the 
Hudson, spending the evening of a long and beauti- 
ful life at '"Sunnyside" amid books and flowers and 



TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS. 35 

friends, and passin<^ away at last as gently and as 
beautifully as a summer cloud floats from the hori- 
zon. We never think of Washington Irving as an 
old man. Such as he do not grow old in the sense 
that other men do. Their lives have no winters. 
They live in the balmy and genial spring, the gor- 
geous summer, and depart amid the fruits and the 
glories of autumn. 

I have said enough perhaps to show that this 
standard of material aggrandizement which the 
world has set up is a false standard when considered 
with sole reference to this life, because it does not 
even guarantee worldly happiness ; but when viewed 
in the light of the other and higher life it becomes 
criminal as well as false. The great truth of the 
soul's immortality has nowhere a grander significance 
than it takes on when applied to the subject which 
I am now discussing. In the light of that truth 
we see how small and how mean appear these purely 
temporal things and interests when compared with 
the great things and the great interests of the un- 
ending hereafter. The one are the mere incidents 
of a fleeting and transitory existence ; the other are 
the everlasting verities of eternity. No success can 
be true, no prosperity can be real, which tends to 
starve and degrade a man's soul instead of filling and 
exalting it. It can not, in any true sense, be said 
of a man that he has been successful and prosperous 
when he has turned his soul out-of-doors to make 
room for his goods. As the soul is above the body, 
so are the soul's interests above the body's wants. 
That success is worse than a failure which does not 
embrace and have reference to the hi^rher wants and 



36 TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS. 

needs of a man, which does not ennoble his soul 
as well as enlarge his possessions. 

How vain are our judgments ! how false and fool- 
ish are our distinctions ! How spiritually blind are 
we that we will not see that which our mortal hands 
can not clutch ! We kno2v, for Heaven tells us, and 
our souls witness it, that our interior moral natures 
and moral interests are infinitely above all the exte- 
riors of our fortunes ; that they are our first and last 
concern which we can not forego or abandon with- 
out fearful risks and fearful losses. No sane man 
in all the world will stand up, or can stand up, to 
dispute this proposition, and yet the world practi- 
cally ignores it every day. If I were a disbeliever 
in the doctrine of the soul's immortality, and wished 
to bring forward the strongest argument against 
it, I would take this almost universal neglect of men 
to live here with any reference to a hereafter ; this 
ceaseless jostling and jarring of little, petty, worldly 
interests and worldly concerns ; this hoarding and 
piling up of earthly goods and earthly riches. I do 
not know of anything which would tend more to 
shake a man's faith in the doctrine than this almost 
universal failure of men to appreciate and act 
upon it. 

It will be well for us who are yet in early or mid- 
dle life, to remember that there is a better and truer 
success than to be rich in money. Prudence, thrift, 
and a reasonable application to business that we 
may provide for ourselves and our families, all this 
is well. And if in honorable venture or enterprise, 
abundance should pour in upon us. it will still be 
well, if we do not permit our souls to contract and 



TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS. 37 

dwarf as our possessions increase and expand. I 
remember that I do not address a commercial au- 
dience to-day. Most of you are little given to buy- 
ing and selling and getting gains. It is one of the 
chiefest glories of such an institution as this that it 
lifts men up to a nobler life, to higher objects and 
ends of human ambition. But still it is a constant 
struggle that all of us need to make in order to 
shake off this prevailing influence around us. The 
earthward tendency is so strong, the intoxication of 
material success is so great, that we need constantly 
to keep in our minds pure ideals, and to have held 
up before us noble examples of the truer and better 
life. Like all men around us, we must confess that 
we, too, desire success, desire prosperity. It is for 
us to say what that success shall be, whether it shall 
be true or false. 

We may not be able, though we strive ever so 
hard, to succeed in accumulating worldly riches. 
We have no sure power over these accidents of for- 
tune. But the other and better riches of which I 
have spoken may be secured by our own volition. 

I do not intend here to trench upon the exclusive 
province of the Christian teacher. I have not the 
sanctions, I make not the professions, which would 
give me the right to do this. But I have a right to, 
and may with propriety, speak earnestly to you 
upon these high moral considerations. I seek in 
this to point you to what I deem a great and funda- 
mental truth, that all true success must depend upon 
the development and the growth of the moral and 
intellectual nature of man. Whatever answers this 
end, no matter what the world may call it, is most 



38 TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS. 

of all to be desired and sought, and whatever hin- 
ders or retards it, whether it be ignorance, or crime, 
or greed, should most of all be shunned and ab- 
horred. 

We should exalt our estimate of the value of those 
possessions that do not perish with their using. 
What hoarded gold, what lands or estates can an- 
swer to a man in the place of integrity, of honor, and 
self-respect ? Is he successful who has all else and 
yet has not these .'* Is he prosperous who has lost 
these in the effort to obtain the other ? Such riches 
do not decay, nor do they depreciate. They irra- 
diate the home of the poor man with a brightness not 
to be equaled by all the flashing gems and diamonds 
of India, and they will give a man passport and rank 
and station in the eternal courts, which the accumu- 
lated gold of the universe can not buy. 

Is it not better to be/V'tv than worldly rich ? And 
what freedom is to be compared to the freedom of 
thoiigJit, oi speech, and o^ action — a freedom which is 
entirely incompatible with a sordid life-effort to make 
money .'* The slavery of gold is debasing and exact- 
ing to the last degree. Its victims toil unceasingly 
with no other reward than the chains that bind them. 
These they forge and rivet day by day and year by 
year. O, how does a full-statured and independent 
man shine out in contrast with this cringing slave ! 
How unspeakably mean appears the one, how tran- 
scendently noble the other ! It can not take us long 
to decide which we will have for our model. Every 
manly instinct, every noble impulse, every right prin- 
ciple of our natures will tell us how great a thing 
and how above all calculations and reckonings of 



TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS. 39 

dollars and cents, it is to be able and ready, at all 
times, and in the face of all danger and all reproach 
of men, to speak out the thoiigJit and the truth 
within us. 

What better thing can a man accjuire in this world 
than a pure, manly, and irreproachable character 
among his fellow men ? What rirher legacy can 
he leave to his children ? This shall endure to them, 
and be a joy to them, long after time or accident or 
misfortune shall have corroded his gold and silver, or 
swept away his houses and lands. What higher 
object of earthly attainment can we have than a true 
happiness and calm contentment, with which all men 
are truly rich, without which the richest in worldly 
goods are poor indeed .-' 

Our ideas of success are, in the main, false and 
superficial. From our low, material point of view, 
our vision is contracted to outside appearances, and 
does not take notice of the inner life of man, nor of 
the outflowing consequences of his acts. What the 
world has called failures have been some of the 
grandest successes in all history. All along the 
pathway of human progress men have fallen beneath 
the scorn and obloquy and reproach of their genera- 
tion, who yet, before they fell, planted seeds of 
immortal growth, whose product now enriches and 
makes glad the earth. Martyrs to science, to liberty 
or religion, wiser than their times, they sowed that 
others might reap, and now enjoy, in the loud ac- 
claim of their posterity, and the noble society of the 
wise and just in heaven, an enduring and immortal 
success. Such men the world can not make poor. 
To such the dungeon, the rack, and the chain become 



40 TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS. 

but instruments and arguments to spread the knowl- 
edge of their triumph throughout the earth, and the 
scaffold of infamy which men build for their doom, a 
ladder of glory by which they mount into the 
heavens ! 

Let the ends of our ambition, then, be such as shall 
be worthy of our immortal natures. Let us have 
high objects in life, pursue them by honest means, 
and never forget that there is to be a hereafter. 
Then life to us shall have its great purpose, and 
death shall not come at last to snatch us in terror 
and despair from our hoarded goods and gold. How 
does that noble passage from Lord Bacon sound out 
over the petty strifes and struggles and ambitions of 
three hundred years : " He that dies in an earnest 
pursuit is like one that is wounded in hot blood, who 
for the time scarce feels the hurt ; and therefore a 
mind fixed and bent upon somewhat that is good doth 
avert the dolors of death ; but above all, believe it, 
the sweetest canticle is Nunc Diintttis, when a man 
hath attained worthy ends and expectations." 
Beautiful words, and full of majestic music to the 
soul ; may their sublime consolation crown our mor- 
tal years ! 

And now, if, in conclusion, I may be permitted to 
mount up from individual interests to national con- 
cerns, still following the analogy of my discourse, I 
would say that this nation will not have achieved a 
true and lasting success over its rebellious and fratri- 
cidal enemies, till not only the last musket shall be 
wrested from their bloody hands, but that barbarous 
and rebellion-breeding institution shall be swept 
away before the all-conquering and ever-enduring 



TRUE AND FALSE SUCCESS. 41 

principles of human freedom, (iod .sets the rock of 
national prosperity and national life where the 
ocean's storms and waves sometimes beat and dash 
against it, but it shall stand unshaken and immovable 
so long as the national heart and the national con- 
science are true to lunnanity and true to him. 



SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT/ 



The Senate being in committee of the whole upon the special order 
(Mr. Grosvenor in the chair), and having under consideration the resolu- 
tions on the state of the Union, reported by the committee on federal 
relations, and resolutions offered as a substitute therefor by Mr. 
Warner. 

Lieutenant-Clovernor May said : — 

Mr. Chairman : It is not without great reluc- 
tance and many misgivings that I rise to take part 
in this discussion. But I believe, sir, that I am in the 
line of safe precedents, and I find some compensation, 
also, in the purpose which I have to raise this discussion 
above any individual crimination or recrimination. I 
purpose to speak to-day upon principles, and I trust 
in such a manner as not to forget what is due in 
courtesy to the opposition members on this floor, 
from whom, as the presiding officer of this body, I 
have ever received the utmost respect and kindness. 

It is not, sir, simply a question of party which we 
are discussing. In my judgment it is more a ques- 
tion o{ country ; and at such a time as this every pa- 
triotic man owes his counsel to the state. To speak 
out is a duty, and no man who loves his country 
should hold his peace. I care nothing, sir, for party 
for the sake of party ; and when my party shall for- 
sake or abandon the cause of my country, I will 
abandon it. But so long as that party is the only 

' Speech delivered in the Senate of the State of Michigan, Keb. 9, 
1863. 

42 



SUSTAIN THE (lOVERNMENT. 43 

party which cordially and fully sustains the national 
administration, in the midst of its great trials and 
difficulties, I can not abandon it without abandoning 
at the same time the cause of my country. 

The resolutions reported by the committee on 
federal relations, and now before the Senate in com- 
mittee of the whole, present the simple proposition 
to support and encourage the government in its ef- 
forts to crush the rebellion. This would seem cer- 
tainly to be a very plain and manifest duty. And so 
it would be in the eyes of all men, if it were not that 
the spirit of party, made hot and mad by the ceaseless 
efforts of demagogues and a partizan press, has inter- 
vened between the citizen and his duty to his gov- 
ernment, and usurped for a time his right reason, and 
made him deaf to the call of his country, and blind 
to her highest and most sacred interests. 

RUT ONE GOVERNMENT, ONE COUNTRY. 

Sir, we have but one government, paternal and 
beneficent in its character — a government that has 
showered blessings and privileges and favors upon 
the citizens of this country. North and South, as 
equally and broadly as the dews of heaven have de- 
scended upon the earth we tread ; and to that govern- 
ment we owe perpetual allegiance and loyalty. Sir, 
we are all on board the same ship, now riding upon 
the stormy waves of popular excitement and civil 
war ; and the blasts which smite against her, and the 
lightnings which rend the starry flag that floats at 
her masthead are common calamities to us all ; and 
if at last this noble ship must go down, we shall all 
Igo to the bottom together, and the angry waters wil 



44 SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. 

close over our party strifes and divisions and ani- 
mosities, as well as over the noblest fabric of free 
government which in all the long ages has ever 
arisen to exalt and bless mankind. 

NO PRACTICAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE ADMIN- 
ISTRATION AND THE GOVERNMENT. 

But some men — a whole party indeed — are en- 
deavoring to make a distinction between support of 
the government and support of the administration. 
There is no logic in the distinction, and nothing but 
mischief and danger can come from the idea. Prac- 
tically, the administration is the government. 

If you will look into the Constitution of the United 
States, you will find there in that great chart of 
our liberties, the broad and majestic framework or 
political skeleton of your government ; you shall find 
mapped out there the provisions for the co-ordinate 
branches of the government, the executive, the legis- 
lative, and the judicial. You shall find there provi- 
sions for a president of the United States and for the 
heads of departments, with duties defined for times 
of peace and times of war. 

Go with me now, sir, to the capital of the nation, 
and I will show you in that much-abused Republican 
president and Republican cabinet, not the dry parch- 
ment, not the paper provisions, but the living, breath- 
ing government of the United States. It is to this 
government, this living representation of the people, 
chosen under the forms of law, and to its official 
acts, that we owe obedience and loyalty. We can 
not support the government as ive would liai-c it, 
but as it is. And it is a bald fallacy, a gross absurd- 



SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. 45 

ity, to say that we can support the government and 
at the same time oppose every measure of the admin- 
istration, which is the only living representative of 
the government. 

A STRUGGLE FOR NATIONAL LIFE. 

The administration at Washington, elected by the 
American people under all the forms and solemnities 
of law, and charged with the highest and gravest 
responsibilities that ever rested upon mortal man, is 
now in the midst of a great struggle for national 
life. Sir, whose struggle is this .' In liliosc behalf 
is it ivaged ? It is not for Abraham Lincoln; it is 
not for the Republican party. No doubt that care- 
worn president, broken and wearied by the trials, 
exactions, and responsibilities of his high station, 
would gladly throw aside the robes of office, and 
seek the rest and retirement of his quiet and simple 
home in Illinois. But he has accepted his high trust 
before man and heaven, and he can not now aban- 
don it. 

I repeat that this is not a struggle for a Repub- 
lican president or the Republican party, but it is a 
struggle of the luhole people to defend the national 
life against traitors banded in arms against it. It 
is your cause and my cause, and every man's cause 
who loves his country and would see her triumph 
over her enemies. 

I do not propose at this time to go back and dis- 
cuss the causes of this war. I have my own very 
clear conviction that it was caused by slavery; by 
the wicked and vaulting ambition of the slave power 
to rule this government. I believe this to be a 



46 SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. 

slaveholders' rebellion against the authority of the 
Constitution, and the rule of the majority of the 
American people. But I will not say more than this 
now. It is sufficient for the purpose of my argu- 
ment to-day, to ask if any man dare stand up on this 
floor^ in the State of Michigan, and say that the gov- 
ernvient did tvrong, when Sumter was bombarded, 
in defending the national life, and that it is now 
prosecuting an unjust and loirighteous war. Who 
dares to say this.' Has it not, indeed, been brought 
as an accusation against this administration b}- its 
political opponents, that it made such small and 
meager military provision at the outset of this war ; 
that it called out only seventy-five thousand men, 
when it ought to have called five times or ten times 
that number .' I take it, therefore, that it is too late 
for our adversaries to charge that this war was not 
rightly and righteously begun by the government 
in self-defense ; and this will, at one blow, annihi- 
late all the miserable sophistry of those gentlemen 
who have labored so hard to throw the responsibil- 
ity of this war upon the Republican party. 

They have already confessed that the government 
was compelled to take up arms, and they have 
charged it with imbecility because it did not do so 
more vigorously and on a grander scale in the 
outset. 

WHAT IS IT TO SUPPORT THE GOVERNMENT .' 

What, then, is it to support the government in this 
war .' Can we do this by assailing and crippling the 
administration .' It takes only coinmon intelligence 
to see that in just so far as we do this we " give aid 



SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. 4( 

and comfort to the enemy." How much better, in- 
deed, than this would the arch-conspirator, the so- 
called president of the Southern Confederacy, have 
his guilty and desperate cause served at the North ? 

Suppose that to-day a delegation of the men of 
Northern birth, residents and supporters of the rebel 
confederacy, should call upon the rebel president, and 
tell him that they were anxious to pass through his 
lines, and return to their old homes in the North with 
the purpose to serve his cause here, and ask for his 
instructions ; what, suppose you, would he tell them ? 
What would be the character of his instructions? 
Would he say to them, " When you reach the North, 
procure at once a musket or a revolver, and shoot 
down the first Lincoln man you meet in the streets 
of Cincinnati or Buffalo?" Or would he tell them 
this : " Go North, but do not attempt at first any 
rtr;«^^ resistance to the government, for the temper 
of the people will not yet bear this, and you will be 
shot or hung at once for your temerity ; but join the 
opponents of Lincoln's administration, write articles 
in the newspapers, make speeches in the assemblies 
of the people, and charge the administration at 
Washington with usurpation and imbecility ; howl 
' Abolitionist,' at every supporter of the government ; 
demand a 'change of rulers,' and in every way, pub- 
lic and private, throw obstacles and hindrances in 
the course of the administration, to the end that it be 
brought into contempt with the people, and the 
North be divided, and our cause be triumphant"? 

But, sir, I will not put further words into the mouth 
of the rebel president, or follow further the sickening 
parallel. By this simple illustration we may see how 



48 SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. 

the cause of treason may be and is served at the 
North. 

THE PROCLAMATION. 

In the light of these preliminary considerations, let 
us now approach the executive proclamation of free- 
dom ; for this, sir, is the great political subject that 
engrosses the public attention, and divides the friends 
and opponents of the administration. 

What is this proclamation ? I ask this question at 
the outset, for its true answer is a perfect solution of 
the whole problem of the discussion, and clears away 
a mass of objections and sophistries. 

NOT A POLITICAL PLATFORM. 

Men talk as if this proclamation were the emana- 
tion of a caucus, or a party platform, to be discussed 
before the people in their primary capacity, and by 
and by to be voted upon at the polls. This most ab- 
surd notion is the prop and foundation of a great mass 
ofobjection and denunciation now being hurled against 
it. Why, sir, this proclamation is not a theory, not a 
political platform, but the solemn, accomplished act 
of the government ; not /;/ fiituro, but in esse ; and 
it can not be opposed without opposing the govern- 
ment. In this sense, the time for all discussion upon 
it is passed ; it is too late even to remonstrate against 
it. And it is not only now a thing which is done, but 
it is a ivar vieasure, so declared upon military neces- 
sity by the head of the army and the nation, who is 
the proper and sole judge, and from whose decision 
there is no appeal, save through the bloody tribunal 
of revolution or rebellion. 

Is any man insane enough to suppose for a single 



SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. 49 

instant that it will be or can be recalled or revoked 
at the behest of a faction or a party ? It is a war 
order, also, from the commander-in-chief to our 
officers in the field, and has been read at the head 
of every division, and every regiment in the army. 
After all this will the president take it back ? Is 
there a citizen in the North so shameless as to desire 
him to take it back ? 

OBEDIENCE TO THE LAW. 

In this view of the case I might safely rest the 
whole subject, and stand simply upon obedience to law, 
to the civil and military power of the government. 

I remember, sir, in this connection, that when that 
most cruel and infamous statute, the Fugitive Slave 
Law, was passed, — a law which I believe to be not 
only cruel but unconstitutional, — and the men of the 
North, turned to the purpose of bloodhounds by its 
savage provisions, cried out in their human hearts 
and human sympathies, " We can not do this thing, 
we can not repress the noblest promptings of our 
natures, and hunt down the poor fugitives from the 
Southern prison-house fleeing toward the North star 
and liberty, these same gentlemen who now array 
themselves in fierce hostility to this war order of the 
president, turned upon us with a sort of soulless sanc- 
tity, and said we must obey the enactment because 
it was law. I commend now, to them, in a good 
cause, and for a just rule, the logic and the advice 
which they so freely proffered in behalf of slavery and 
barbarism. 

"iMEDDLING" WITH MILITARY "PLANS." 

I can not forget, also, that this same class of men 
have recently indulged in unseemly and clamorous 
4 



60 SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. 

denunciation of everybody who has "meddled," 
or been thought to "meddle" with the "plans" 
of our generals. Has it not been said, indeed, that 
my whole party has " meddled " and interfered with 
the military "plans" of General McClellan, with his 
peninsular campaign especially, and have we not> 
again and again, been solemnly warned that nobodyy 
not even the cabinet at Washington, had any business 
to "meddle" with the military arrangements of any 
general in our army ? Now, sir, I again commend 
these gentlemen to their own logic. In what right 
or propriety do they not only "meddle" with, but 
absolutely howl at, this " plan " of the commander- 
in-chief .'' This proclamation, as I have already said^ 
is a military measure, a war order or plan simply^ 
made by the head of the army, and acquiesced in and 
obeyed by all his subordinates. It is as much and 
as purely a military measure to suppress this rebel- 
lion as was the " plan " for the peninsular campaign, 
or the battle of Antietam. And it is in this view, 
and for this purpose, that it is approved and sup- 
ported by the friends of the administration. 

THE PROCLAMATION CONSTITUTIONAL. 

But we are not afraid to go further, and to meet 
our adversaries upon the legal and moral j-ighteous- 
ness of this measure. 

And here, sir, I come in contact with that class 
of men who seem to think that the Constitution was 
made expressly to perpetuate slavery and to serve 
the cause of treason and traitors. I shall enter upon 
no dry, legal, technical argument of this question. 
I have no inclination to do so, and it would serve 



SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. 51 

little purpose if I should. Sir, men do not stop 
in the midst of civil convulsions and revolutions 
to decide such questions upon the quibbles of law- 
yers and the technicalities of courts. No doubt, 
sir, I could prove my case in that way, before the 
proper tribunal, but I prefer to-day to make the 
popular and decisive argument to the broad and now 
quickened common sense of the people. We need 
not ransack books and documents for precedents and 
authority to save the nation in this crisis from ruin. 
There is an argument in the stern necessities of the 
time and situation, which is higher and stronger than 
all others. 

THE GREAT RIGHT OF NATIONAL SELF-DEFENSE. 

I hold that the Constitution must be interpreted 
for and not against the nation. It is, of itself 
a great chart of national life and safety, not a death- 
warrant, not a millstone about the nation's neck 
to drag it down beneath the black waves of rebel- 
lion. There is in it, and must be in it, whether 
expressed in words or not, THE GREAT RIGHT OF 
NATIONAL SELF-DEFENSE. Nations have in this the 
same rights as individuals with this difference only, 
that they have a more solemn and weighty obligation 
resting upon them. 

The life of a single man, which, under the law, he 
may rightly defend with any and every means in his 
power, may be of small consequence to society or 
the state. But there are bound up in the life of such 
a nation as this, interests of priceless value to man- 
kind, and which take hold on distant ages. Will it 
be said that the individual, assailed by the robber 



52 SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. 

or the assassin, may defend his life to the last ex- 
tremity though it be the taking of life, but that the 
nation, when assailed by worse than robbers or 
assassins, must die because it world be " unconstitu- 
tional " to live ? This nation is assailed to-day by 
banded traitors and conspirators in arms ; its life is 
in danger ; can't we defend it ? Can't the nation 
defend itself? Away with the miserable sophistry 
that says we must give up. the struggle because we 
can not legally live. 

Sir, if we were mean enough and base enough to 
desire it ourselves, we could not give up this struggle. 
The recollections and immortal examples of a noble 
ancestry, not less than the solemn trust which we 
hold for future ages, would forbid it. We are not act- 
ing simply for ourselves, nor for one generation of 
men, but for a long line of generations, and with this 
great responsibility upon us we have no right to let 
the government be destroyed and the nation die. 

THE RIGHTS OF TRAITORS. 

Sir, we hear much said in these days about the 
" rights" of traitors ; about depriving the citizens of 
the disloyal States of their "constitutional guaran- 
tees." And these pleas in behalf of rebels are put 
forth by the very men who can see no " constitu- 
tional " right of the nation to defend its own life. 
Now, I ask by what infernal logic shall the Constitu- 
tion be interpreted in the interest of traitors who 
assail it, and against loyal men who defend it ? 

These men, too, can see no difference whatever be- 
tween the "rights" of citizens in States which have 
rebelled and those which are loyal, between times 



SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. 53 

of peace and times of war. What do they mean when 
they talk about the " rights " of traitors ? Do they 
pretend that the status of a rebel is the same as that 
of a loyal citizen .' Sir, go with me to yonder peni- 
tentiary, and see how many " rights " are enjoyed by 
those confined within its gloomy walls. Were they 
not, sir, citizens of Michigan .'' Mow happens it, then, 
that they now enjoy but one right in common with 
us, the right to breath God's air, though to them it 
is loaded with prison vapors .-' Why, sir, they have 
committed offenses against the State ; they have 
stolen from their neighbors; been convicted oi la^-ceny^ 
for instance, and for this all their civil rights have 
been taken from them. 

Now, what is the offense of these men, these fellow 
citizens of ours, to the offense of Jefferson Davis and 
his fellow rebels ^. What compkrison does larceny 
bear to treason .^ What is its comparative grade 
under the law ^ Sir, these traitors in arms have con- 
spired, wickedly and basely conspired, against the 
best government under the sun ; they are struggling 
to tear down this glorious fabric of free institutions, 
to undermine the pillars of this blood-consecrated 
Union, and to involve us and humanity in indescri- 
bable and appalling ruin. Have the)- any "rights" 
which we should carefully protect while they are en- 
gaged in the work .' Is it one of their " rights " that 
they shall not be injured or weakened in any measure 
while destroying us .' 

CONSTrrUTION.\L IK NECESSARY. 

Now, following the inevitable logic of this great 
right of self-defense, which inheres in the political 



54 SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. 

organization of every people, I hold that if this meas- 
ure, this proclamation of the president is necessary 
to crush the rebellion, or even if it will assist in 
crushing the rebellion, it is constitutional. 

Will it be said that more than three million black 
laborers at the South do not constitute an element of 
strength for the rebellion ? Here is a great servile 
population, inured to toil under a sun which is too hot 
for the white master, that till the soil, raise the crops, 
and labor in the fields of the South, with scanty- 
clothing, and food of the simplest and coarsest kind. 
Nowhere in the world can be found an equal number 
of laborers, doing the same amount of work at so lit- 
tle cost. Why not detach these laborers from the 
rebel cause ? 

Suppose, sir, that this war should be given over 
as a private enterprise to some man, some foreigner, 
if you please, who should be entirely free from our 
political prejudices and animosities, past and present. 
How long would it take him, if he were a man of 
common sense, to say nothing of genius, looking at 
this great servile, unpaid element of labor at the 
South and within the lines of the enemy, — I say how 
long would it take him to make up his mind that it 
would be an object of paramount importance to 
detach these laborers from the cause of the enemy, 
even if he did not seek to array them on his own 
side.? Can men be so blinded by partizan rage and 
bitterness as not to see so clear a thing as this.? I 
can not stop here, sir, to point out in detail the 
many ways in which these laborers might be made 
to serve our cause and hurt that of the rebels ; but 
will it, can it be insisted that as a practical war 



SUSTAIN THE GOVERXMEXT. 55 

measure, this is of no moment and no consetjuence ? 
It seems to me that only lunatics can thus talk. 

A SERVILE INSURRECTION. 

But it is urged that this proclamation will pro- 
duce a servile, or slave, insurrection in the Southern 
States. Do luc fear such an insurrection .-' Are we 
more tender of rebels than of our own noble soldiers t 
I do not, by any means, admit that this consequence 
will flow from the proclamation, and I do not expect 
such an event, but should this even be the case, on 
the heads of Southern rebels will rest this blood. 
War is war ; and they, utterly without cause, inau- 
gurated war, and now they must take all its bloody 
chances and vicissitudes. We must not and can not 
forego that which will give us victory, out of tender- 
ness to a malignant rebel population. 

''LIFE. LIBERTY, AND PROPERTY." 

But passing from this objection to the proclama- 
tion, I come now seriously and candidly to consider 
the only specific constitutional argument which I 
have ever heard urged against it. In the midst of 
this great and indiscriminate mass of denunciation 
which is hurled at this measure, I have seen but one 
position taken which is based upon a particular pro- 
vision of the Constitution. It is said that it violates 
that proxision. or section, of the Constitution which 
declares that neither the '■ life, liberty, nor property' 
of the citizen shall be taken "without due process of 
law." It is claimed that this measure of the presi- 
dent conflicts with that guaranty. 

Now, sir, mark the order in which these subjects, 



56 SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. 

guarded by the provision, stand arranged. '''Life,'"'' 
the highest and most sacred right and privilege 
which man can enjoy, and which he derives directly 
from the hand of his Creator; ''liberty'' next, the 
right to use life for its noblest ends and purposes ; 
and " propcrty^^ last and least in importance. 

Of course, it can not be pretended that the guar- 
anty is any stronger in the case oi property than in 
either of the preceding subjects. This being the 
fact, then, and looking at the Southern slave as prop- 
erty, the same as a mule or a horse, — a favorite view 
with this class of objectors, — it will follow that if it 
be "unconstitutional" to deprive the rebel master of 
his slave without " due process of law," it will cer- 
tainly be equally "unconstitutional" to deprive him 
of his " liberty "' or his " life " without this " process."' 
So this argument ends at last in the most puerile 
and absurd conclusion that, before we can shoot 
down or capture a rebel in battle, we must serve a 
writ or a warrant upon him through the machinery 
of the courts ! And here with this most complete 
reductio ad absiirdiim falls flat to the ground the 
only specific constitutional objection to the proc- 
lamation. 

CONTEMPT OF HUMAN RIGHTS. 

I am aware, sir, that there is one other objection 
to the proclamation, which, although it is not gener- 
ally urged in the form of argument, nevertheless 
enters largely into the whole subject. Incredible as 
it might appear upon its face, there is a class of men 
at the North, a much larger class than I could wish, 
who oppose this great measure because it will confer 



SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. 5T 

freedom upon three millions of human beings ! Sir, 
it is one of the most lamentable features of this 
struggle that we are now having developed and culti- 
vated among us a contempt for the rights of man. I 
have observed with amazement and horror the per- 
sistent and seemingly concerted attempts of partizan 
demagogues and a venal press to pour ridicule, con- 
tempt, and denunciation upon a weak and unoffend- 
ing race among us, — a race guilty of no crime but the 
color of their skins and a degradation extending back 
through long and weary centuries. Upon the heads 
of these poor people, guiltless, by the common con- 
sent of mankind, of any part in our great quarrel, is 
being daily hurled a mass of vituperation and of 
venom ; in some instances directly calculated and 
intended to excite against them the lawless violence 
of a class of white men, more ignorant and degraded 
than themselves. 

Whence and from what spirit come such efforts 
as these .' Are we men or are we devils .-* The negro 
may not be your equal or mine, but he is neverthe- 
less a man, made so by the same God and common 
Father of us all, and bound with us to tha:t same 
great tribunal of the hereafter, where with us he will 
be judged, not according to the color of the skin, not 
according to these petty and false distinctions, but 
according to the deeds done here in the body. 

Sir, I believe that God has created of one blood all 
the nations of men. I believe in a common human- 
ity, and according to the precepts of this great law, 
I recognize in the humblest slave that toils under 
a rebel lash in the Southern fields, a man and a 
brother ; and you can not trample upon the rights of 



-58 SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. 

the poorest and meanest member of this abused and 
outraged race among us without inflicting a common 
wrong, and striking a common blow upon humanity 
everj^where. 

To fall upon the weak and the defenseless, to insult 
and wrong those already abused and prostrate, is 
base and despicable to the last degree. Sir, it was 
the germ and very soul of the chivalry of the olden 
time to defend the weak and helpless against the 
strong and powerful, and the knight drew his inspira- 
tion in the battle from this lofty purpose and motive. 
I envy not the heart of that man among us who 
desires to add even a feather's weight to the wrongs 
under which this unfortunate race now suffers ; and 
although I step aside from the course of my argu- 
ment to-day to allude to this subject, I can not be- 
lieve that words spoken in behalf of common humanity 
in this Senate will fall upon unwilling ears. It will 
be a sad day for the Republic, and for our liberties, 
when the people are taught to despise or contemn 
human rights. I regard it as one of the proudest 
moments and highest privileges of my life that I am 
permitted, in this high presence, to speak these poor 
words in behalf of the wronged and outraged, who 
can not speak for themselves. 

NOT A CAUSE, BUT A CONSEQUENCE. 

But let no man misunderstand or misquote me. I 
do not, and my party does not, advocate support of 
this proclamation of the president because it will give 
freedom to the slave. That we do not hold to be its 
legal, its constitutional, basis and reason. The presi- 
dent could not and would not, for this reason, have 



SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT, 59 

been justified in issuing it. Hut if, as one of the coii- 
scquctices of this measure, human slavery is to be 
overturned in this land ; if through the mad and 
guilty act of the Southern conspirators themselves, 
this great good is to result to mankind, as a lover of 
my country and a friend of humanity, I must rejoice 
at this beneficent consummation. So much the bet- 
ter if, in following the law and defending our own 
life, we may slay the great assassin — SLAVERY. 

WE MUST STAND BY THE REPUBLICAN I'ARTY. 

Why not then support this great war measure of 
the president's ? You will look in vain, sir, for any 
party in these resolutions. All they ask is that this 
Legislature support the administration in the prose- 
cution of the war. But shall we abandon the presi- 
dent because he was elected b)> Republicans, the 
cause of the nation because it is in Republican hands ? 
I turn now to those specious gentlemen on the other 
side, and put this question to them. Shall we let the 
ship sink because we don't like the pilot ? 

The Republican party has but one object, one prin- 
ciple, one purpose to-day, to support with all its heart 
and strength and energy^ without qualification or res- 
ervation, THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNION. 

How can it abandon this principle, this purpose, 
without treason to the cause of the nation? Gentle- 
men on the other side, when you ask us to lay aside 
our party, you ask us to lay aside our country with 
it ; when you oppose us and denounce us, you oppose 
and denounce the only men and the only party in 
this land that now stand boldly and firmly up to 
the support of the national administration. This is 



60 SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. 

the reason why we can not now abandon our party. 
We turn to you, and ask you to come and join us, 
forgetting the past, and stand shoulder to shoulder 
with us in this great work. The government, in its 
pressing dangers and sore trials, needs our united 
arms and counsels. 

Why will you not do this ? This republican ad- 
ministration must continue over two years longer ; 
it can not be legally displaced in a shorter time. 
What do you mean when you talk about "a change 
of measures and of rulers"? Do you mean rebellion 
at the North against the constituted authorities ? Is 
there some dark threat, some concealed design in 
these words? If so, I pray you to pause and reflect 
before you take the fatal step. Look well to the 
abyss before you, recall the common past with all 
its proud and glorious recollections, think on what 
the future may be. Ah ! if you enter upon this 
guilty design, the Fathers shall rise from their graves 
and rebuke you ; this generation shall curse you, 
and history shall load you with eternal infamy. But 
I can not believe that you are yet prepared for this 
open resistance to the government. 

But why, if you love your country, and are true to 
her, as you say you are, thus attempt to sow dissen- 
sion, division, and bitterness at the North .-• Can not 
the result of all this be seen } What other effect can 
it have than to ivcakcn us and stroigthoi our ene- 
mies ? What better aid than this could possibly be 
rendered here to the rebel cause ? 

SNEERS AT NEW ENGLAND. 

Sir, it has of late become a very common thing for 
those men at the North who oppose the administra- 



SUSTAIN THE GOVERXMKNT. 61 

tion and its leading measures, to sneer at and de- 
nounce New England ; and all loyal men have been 
pained and shocked to see this unnatural prejudice 
elaborated in the recent message of a professedly 
loyal governor, and he, too, the chief magistrate of 
the great State of New York. Why do these men 
hate New England ? Who can not see that it is be- 
cause they hate that great sentiment and principle 
of human liberty, to which she has ever been true, 
and which constitutes her chiefest glory ? Where, 
sir, on the face of God's earth, can you find a people 
so intelligent, so free and liberty-loving, so imbued 
with all the elements of Christian civilization, as the 
people who reside among the hills and mountains of 
New England ? 

Hate New England ! Hate the mother that bore 
us ! And this, too, to appease the spirit of human 
slavery ! God forbid ! New England, sir, has ever 
been true to the country and to liberty through all 
our trials in the past, and she is true and loyal to- 
day ; and if, in the providence of God, this great re- 
bellion shall beat back the armies of the Union, and 
this wave of returning barbarism shall roll over our 
land, annihilating in its progress every vestige of 
free government, on the soil of New England shall 
be fought the last great battle for LIBERTY on this 
continent ; and before the standard goes down, the 
clash and clangor of the conflict shall mingle with 
the roar of the ocean's waves that beat and dash 
against the historic rock on which her glorious 
history began. 



62 SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. 

SHALL WE COMPROMISE ? 

Sir, what would Democrats have us do ? Shall we 
abandon the government ? Shall we submit to reb- 
els in arms ? Shall we compromise? I do not over- 
look the fact that the so-called Democratic party in 
the loyal States, and in this Legislature, have now 
fully planted themselves upon the doctrine of com- 
promise with the enemy. They so write, speak, and 
resolve, here and everywhere. They say that this 
contest can not and must not be settled with arms, 
and under this administration, and they are calling 
for a national convention to adjust the controversy 
and arrange the terms of peace. 

Have we ever thought of what it would be to com- 
promise now ? Who besides the Democratic party 
asks for compromise.? Do the rebels.?— No. They 
say they want only their independence of us ; the 
recognition of their rebel confederacy. Compro- 
mise, then, for us, means surrender. We must lower 
the flag when we ask for terms ; for all the world 
knows that we entered upon this contest to assert 
and maintain the rightful supremacy and majesty of 
the government. To propose or accept less than 
that now is to acknowledge that we have been 
beaten. 

Must we make this acknowledgment before the 
world .? Have we exhausted all our resources .' Sir, 
our fathers fought seven years to establish our liber- 
ties. Shall we fight no longer than ti^^'o years to 
defend them .? We are yet far from being van- 
quished ; we are still strong and powerful in all the 
resources of war, and we have a sacred trust in our 



SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. 63^ 

hands which we hold for all coming time. We must 
not give over the contest yet. Before we do that^ 
we should reflect upon the fearful stake which we 
have in this great struggle. 

THE TREMENDOUS ISSUE. 

Sir, what does this rebellion seek to accomplish, 
and what has it cost us already ? It aims at nothing 
less than the utter subdivision of this great and 
beneficent government of ours ; at the destruction of 
human liberty on this continent, and the building up 
of a great slave empire in their stead. An issue so 
tremendous and vast as this calls for the last man, 
and the last dollar, and the last and utmost human 
effort, before the nation shall yield. History, at its 
stern and impartial bar, will hold us accountable for 
our conduct in this hour. 

THE SHARE OF MICHIGAN. 

This war has already cost us uncounted millions of 
treasure and an appalling sacrifice of our best and 
bravest lives. The share of our own noble State, in 
this common offering on the altar of the country, has 
been great and precious. More than forty-five thou- 
sand of our fellow citizens have gone forth to fight 
our battles and defend our liberties. How many of 
them have gone forth, never to return ! There are 
men in this Senate, and within the sound of my voice 
to-day, whose hearts have been torn by this accursed 
rebellion. The noble boy that went forth in the full 
flush of youth and early manhood ; the manly 
brother or husband who rallied to the old flag ; 
these have fallen in the shock and roar of the battle. 



64 SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. 

and they now sleep beneath the blood-stained fields, 
which their courage and valor have made immortal. 
Ah ! you shall wait long for their returning footsteps, 
but they will never come back. Willing and cheer- 
ful sacrifices, they have laid their lives upon the 
altar of their country. 

And others, not unknown to fame, and whose pre- 
cious lives are the common loss of the whole State, 
have fallen, too. The noble Wisner, once the chief 
magistrate of our growing commonwealth, who left 
a pleasant home, and business, and honors, to fall by 
the hand of disease in the camp, not less a victim to 
the cause than if he had died by rebel bullet or 
bayonet ; the gallant Richardson, so recently my own 
beloved commander, who sank under that ghastly 
wound at Antietam ; and Woodbury and Brodhead 
and Gilluly, these men, true and loyal sons of Mich- 
igan, have passed through the river of death, to 
receive on the other side the enduring reward laid 
up for those who defend their country in the hour 
of danger. 

A VOICE FROM THE BATTLE-FIELD. 

Shall we compromise ? Go ask those dead heroes 
who have fallen in our cause, for though dead, they 
yet speak. Listen to the voice that comes from 
those ensanguined and consecrated battle-fields, 
where Michigan's best blood has been shed : " Legis- 
lators of Michigan ! pause well before you listen to 
the counsels of those who would make our blood 
spilled in vain. It was in a noble cause that we 
took up arms, and for which we yielded up our lives ; 
do not, we pray you, surrender it, and thus rob pos- 



SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. 65 

terity of the fruits "of our sacrifices, and our memo- 
ries of just and merited honor. Stand yet by the 
old fla<j, under whose starry folds we fought and 
died ; stand for the CONSTITUTION ! stand for the 
Union ! stand for Liberty ! " 

SUPPORT THE PRESIDENT. 

Yes, Mr. Chairman, let us stand by the country 
and its chosen head. The president has not erred 
on the side o^ severity. As his friend and loyal sup- 
porter, as a member of his own party, sustaining 
him cordially in all that he has done to crush the 
rebellion, and only wishing that he had done more, 
I have a right to say, that in my judgment, and in 
the judgment of a large class of his best friends, he 
has been too lenient to rebels and rebel sympathi- 
zers. Sir, in this war I am no partizan. If there be 
among our public men a man whom I admire, and 
who has shown that he has the genius for command 
in such stormy times as these, it is that general who 
hails from the same much-abused and slandered 
New England — glorious, democratic Butler! 

THE FUTURE— THE VICTORY. 

If we are true to the country, and true to our- 
selves, this great struggle will soon have its glorious 
end ; these costly sacrifices of blood and treasure 
shall have their enduring reward. We are now 
learning the great lesson of national adversity, and 
as individual men, when tried by loss, misfortune, 
and affliction, develop and cultivate the best and 
strongest elements of character, so may a great 
nation, when passing through the fiery ordeal of 
5 



66 SUSTAIN THE GOVERNMENT. 

revolution or rebellion, bring out the strong and 
noble traits which give dignity to mankind, and 
which history delights to hand down to immortal 
fame. 

We must triuinp/i in this great contest. The world 
is looking on. The grandest of all earthly interests 
hang trembling in the balance. Human liberty for 
this land, and for all lands ; free government among 
men ; these priceless and immortal boons are com- 
mitted to our hands. Oh ! for courage and strength 
equal to the crisis. Take hope ! Voices call to us 
from the graves of the past ; from martyrs and 
heroes who have died for liberty and Christian civili- 
zation in every age. They speak words of lofty 
encouragement in our ears, and posterity, from the 
bosom of the shadowy future, sends to our hearts a 
cry of thrilling and earnest appeal, — Don't give up the 
battle ! This land shall be a land of liberty forever- 
more ; the chosen home and seat of a great, benefi- 
cent, and free government. 



SPEECH AT PORTLAND, MAINE/ 



Mr. President, Gentlemen of the Board of Trade, 

and Fellozv Citiscns: 

On behalf of the Detroit Board of Trade, as well 
as their associates from Milwaukee and Chicago, I 
desire to return to you and to the citizens of this 
beautiful city our most hearty thanks for this mag- 
nificent welcome. 

We have just enjoyed a most delightful excursion 
through the heart of the neighboring Province of 
Canada, have paused long enough to receive the 
hospitalities of their two principal cities, and to 
express to them from the depths of our hearts the 
hope that the relations of peace^ and concord now 
existing between the two governments may be last- 
ing and permanent. [Applause.] 

And now we stand once more on the soil of our 
own beloved land, and receive the warm welcome 
of brother countr)-men in this spacious hall, which 
would be an ornament to any city in Christendom, 
in this beautiful city, which sits like a queen upon 
her throne, looking down upon your broad and spa- 
cious harbor, filled with the ships and the commerce 
of the whole earth. [Applause. ] We bring you 
greeting from the chief cities of the Northwest. 
You are our brothers and our friends. Accursed, 
thrice accursed, be the man who speaks of separa- 
ting the East from the West ! [Immense applause.] 
Leave New Encjland out of the I'nion ! And what 



1 As reported in the I'ortland Press, hwg. 6, 1863. 

67 



68 SPEECH AT PORTLAND, MAINE. 

would the Union be without her? In behalf of the 
great West, I repudiate the sentiment as the base 
offspring of desperate and despicable politicians. 

Here on these shores, lashed by the ocean's waves 
and storms, are the bones of our fathers and the 
homes of our childhood. And there, a little way 
down on the coast, is Plymouth Rock, whence from 
foreign lands and despotisms our ancestors brought 
the seeds of civil and religious liberty, which have 
ripened into this majestic framework of civil gov- 
ernment, the noblest work of human hands. [Ap- 
plause.] No, never shall New England be left out of 
the Union. She is ours in all her glorious history, 
in all her great names and institutions. [Applause.] 

Sir, I was glad to see that in the generous words 
of welcome which you gave us, you did not 'fail to 
make mention of our country and its perils. How 
do all loyal hearts here to-day turn to that starry 
banner, and pray God that the noble government 
which it represents may triumph over all her ene- 
mies, domestic and foreign. [Great applause.] I 
need make no apology to you for following the 
example which has been set me. In the midst of 
all our commerce, in the midst of all our banquets 
and all our pleasures, our hearts instinctively go out 
to our country in this hour of her struggle and her 
danger. A few days ago our hearts were saddened 
and cast down by her perils and her disasters, but 
now, thank God, the sun of victory has appeared 
through the clouds and the darkness, and now rides 
majestic up the mid-heavens. Our cause shall tri- 
umph. The skies are bright with our blazing victo- 
ries. [Great applause.] 



SPEECH AT PORTLAND, MAINE. 69 

As a Western man it has made my heart beat 
faster to hear and see your generous enthusiasm for 
our brave Western army and its gallant leaders. 
That noble army deserves your confidence and your 
applause. 

Under the lead of its Grant and other heroes, it 
has at last cut the great rebellion in twain and recon- 
quered the Mississip[)i for commerce and for free- 
dom. [Applause.] It is worthy of immortal honors. 
I do not forget also that in this great struggle to 
save our country, commerce, the commercial men of 
the country have poured out their millions with 
ungrudging liberality. All honor to them for it. 
[Applause.] The interest they have felt in this 
great stake has been deep and strong. What is our 
commerce without our liberty, without our country ? 
Do we ever stop to think what priceless and im- 
mortal interests and hopes are committed to us in 
this great struggle .'' Well may we fight the com- 
mon enemy with the sword and the purse, when in 
defeat we see neither liberty nor commerce, but 
only darkness and chaos. 

Fellow citizens, nations in some sense have future 
accountability, are in their deeds and their history 
immortal. In this view, how solemn and fearful is 
the responsibility of this people to-day ! What shall 
the world be if our cause shall go down in defeat ? 
But it will not go down in defeat ! This gigantic 
rebellion shall be crushed, this glorious land shall be 
preserved, — the home of civil libert}- forevermore, 
regenerated and purified in the fiery trial through 
which it is now passing. [Great applause.] 

I have taken a license from the speech of your 



70 SPEECH AT PORTLAND, MAINE. 

president to say this much upon this topic which is 
so near to all our hearts. It remains for me to say- 
now that the great West, with its teeming millions 
of population, and its vast area of productive acres, 
can not be insensible to any effort or project tending 
to increase the commercial facilities between them 
and you. This city is one of the natural outlets of 
our great Western commerce. Through your spa- 
cious port it may find its way to the markets of the 
world. It is this which underlies and gives charac- 
ter to this festive and joyous occasion. 

But I must not protract my remarks beyond what 
they were intended to be, an impromptu word of 
acknowledgment for this magnificent reception. 
Citizens of Portland, your princely generosity 
touches our hearts with the deepest gratitude. 
Again permit me, in behalf of my friends, here 
at this gateway of the sea, while our brows are 
cooled by these grateful ocean breezes, to return 
you our warmest thanks. [Great applause.] 



UNION, VICTORY, AND FREEDOM. 



Mr. Chairman and Fcllozv Citi::ens: 

You do me the honor to ask my counsel con- 
cerning the war and the grave questions which 
have grown out of it. I comply with your wish, not 
because I have any wisdom to impart, or knowledge 
to communicate which you have not already, but be- 
cause it is a grateful office and a high privilege thus 
to meet you here, and to speak even poor words in 
behalf of that great loyal cause which we all love so 
well. The people who sent us here have a right to 
know our views and opinions upon the questions of 
the day, and I shall consider myself happy and for- 
tunate, if in what I shall say to-night, I may in some 
degree speak for gentlemen around me, of like polit- 
ical sentiments, associated with me here in the public 
service. 

Even in ordinary times the condition of his coun- 
try is a subject of deep and abiding interest to the 
citizen. If the great Roman dramatist expressed a 
truth in the lofty exclamation, " Whatever concerns 
humanity concerns me," how clearly true it is that 
whatever concerns that aggregration of humanity, of 
like race, lineage, and tongue which we call our 
nation, living and acting in that broad and beautiful 
land which we call our country, and holding in trust 
for all posterity the privileges, blessings, and hopes 
of civil liberty and Christian civilization, must come 

1 Speech delivered in the hall of Representatives, at Lansing, Mich., 
Jan. 25, 1864, at the request of the Republican members of both houses 
of the Legislature. 

71 



72 UNION, VICTORY, AND FREEDOM. 

home to us with emphatic distinctness and power. 
It has been, and is yet, a proud boast and a real 
felicity to be an American citizen. And it has been 
so, and is so now, for reasons higher and broader 
than those which grow out of our merely selfish 
interests, — our personal security, our rights of prop- 
erty, and life protected and guarded by the govern- 
ment. These will pass away with our mortal lives^ 
while their source and fountain, we trust, shall en- 
dure for all time and all ages and races. 

But if it be true that the citizen of this country 
has such interests and hopes confided to his govern- 
ment in ordinary times, in times of peace, security, 
and quiet, how must his heart be thrilled with the 
deepest emotions of solicitude and anxiety at such 
a time as this, when the solid earth beneath us seems 
to tremble with the tramp of contending armies, and 
the folds of that starry flag which symbolizes all that 
is dear and precious to him as a citizen are lost to 
view in the sulphurous clouds of battle, to come forth 
again resplendent with victory or to be trampled 
down forever in the dust of humiliating defeat i 

THE WAR — ITS MAGNITUDE AND RESULTS. 

We have now been nearly three years in the midst 
of the stirring incidents and varying fortunes of a civil 
war of unparalleled magnitude, upon which depend 
interests and results of proportionate vastness and 
importance. A war of such gigantic proportions has 
not been waged in modern times. Stretching along 
a line of nearly three thousand miles, it has involved 
more extended operations, more skirmishes, sieges, 
and battles, and a vaster outlay of men and money- 



UNION, VICTORY, AND FREEDOM. 73 

than the world has seen before for many centuries- 
There have been more than twice as many soldiers 
marshaled under the banners of the Union as 
marched with the chivalry of Europe in the first 
crusade against the holy city ; vastly more than 
fought under the standards of the great Marlborough; 
and nearly three times as many as constituted that 
great host which the first Napoleon led against the 
frozen skies and snows of Russia. 

And upon the result of this great struggle depend 
such interests and consequences as have not marked 
and dignified any civil war in all the world's history. 
The bloody civil contest that raged in England be- 
tween the followers of the houses of York and Lan- 
caster only settled the claims of rival tyrants to the 
throne, leaving the people where it found them. 
The struggle between the house of Stuart and the 
English Reformers in the seventeenth century, 
marked by the execution of Charles I, the rule of 
Cromwell, and the expulsion of James II, involved 
graver issues, being a protest and an effort on the part 
of a long-suffering and indignant people against the 
doctrines of absolutism in church and state. But it 
only looked to the amelioration of despotism, not its 
complete overthrow, and has been succeeded ever 
since by the sway of a monarchy and the domination 
of a state religion. Neither did the sanguinary and 
cruel civil war in France during the latter half of the 
sixteenth century, illustrated by the massacre of St. 
Bartholomew, settle any questions of civil liberty or 
government. It sprang out of the church, and spent 
its fury in the fruitless slaughter of Protestant and 
Catholic. 



T4 UNION, VICTORY, AND FREEDOM. 

But our great Civil war strikes deeper and broader 
than all these. Here, the question to be settled is 
the right of the people to have and maintain a popu- 
lar and free government, founded upon the broadest 
principles of humanity and freedom. It is the right 
of a republic to live, of a nation to perpetuate itself, 
and keep alive for the world and posterity its great 
organic principle and characteristic of civil liberty. 
It is the right to hold the high vantage ground which 
•has been gained in all the sacrifices and struggles 
and triumphs of the race in the onward and upward 
march of so many centuries to the present hour, 
against the spirit of caste, of oligarchy and despotism, 
now and here in open and wicked revolt, not only 
against our government, but against the interests of 
mankind. Finally, and in a word, it is to settle the 
question whether this great American Republic, which 
has had such a history, which has stretched out its wide 
arms to bless and protect so many millions, and 
which holds in trust for all future ages the priceless 
boon of civil liberty, shall live to run its great career 
and realize its high destiny, or shall go down in de- 
spair and darkness, leaving the world to despotism 
and oppression more secure and remorseless than 
ever before, because our great experiment has failed. 
Well may the nations watch the fortunes of such a 
contest, and history hold her pen to record the por- 
tentous result. 

HOW CAME THE WAR ? 

Whence and how came this war.'* The presiden- 
tial election of 18<)0 had resulted in the choice of 
Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate. There 



UNION, VICTORY, AND FREEDOM. 75 

was no pretense anywhere that the election was not 
fair, and participated in by all the States. The plat- 
form upon which the successful candidate had been 
elected proposed no unconstitutional, radical, or 
revolutionary measures. It committed the newly 
elected president and his party to no political doc- 
trine which had not, indeed, been advocated, at one 
time or another, by every party and nearly every 
prominent statesman in the country. As to the 
question of slavery, the Chicago platform of 1860 
was only another and even milder form of the 
Wilmot proviso of 1846. Its ratification by the 
American people was simply a dedication of the new 
Territories forever to freedom. 

But the party of slavery at the South, whose can- 
didates had been defeated, immediately commenced 
the work of secession and treason. Before the new 
president was inaugurated, and while the infamous 
administration of his predecessor still lasted, a pre- 
tended and rebel confederacy had been formed which 
pledged the States and the people composing it to 
the utter abrogation and defiance of the federal au- 
thority. When the new administration came into 
power, it found this organized treason confronting it. 
Six weeks of painful suspense elapsed, and rebel 
guns which had long been trained upon Fort Sumter 
opened with shot and shell upon a federal fortress 
and its devoted garrison, over which floated the 
common emblem of the Union and a symbol of the 
national authority — ^the stars and stripes. The war 
was thus and then inaugurated by the overt and 
bloody act of the traitors, without possible fault or 
blame on the part of the government. 



76 UNION, VICTORY, AND FREEDOM. 

To meet this great danger, the president called 
for seventy-five thousand men to protect the govern- 
ment property and uphold the national authority. 
Could he have done less ? Was there any alternative ? 
Did any man or party stand up then at the North to 
denounce the administration for this act ? — -No. All 
said it was right ; that the rebellion was without jus- 
tification ; that the war was forced upon the nation 
and must be met by all the power of the nation. It 
is true, many did say that the call should have been 
for ten times as many men, but no voice in the loyal 
North blamed the president for tJiat proclamation. 

THE GLORIOUS DAYS OF APRIL, 1861. 

After the lapse of nearly three years — toilsome, 
weary, bloody years — it is an inspiration yet to 
think of that great, whole-souled unanimity which 
then took possession of and swayed all the North. 
We never can forget, and the world never will forget, 
those glorious days of April, ISGl. How the fires of 
patriotism swept and blazed through the land, de- 
vouring in their fervent heat all opposition to the 
government, and melting the hearts of the people 
into one great, loyal unit in defense of the nation. 
How the mountainsides, the hilltops, and the val- 
leys were lighted up, and the folds of the old flag 
beamed with new luster as they everywhere floated 
out grandly to the irrepressible popular enthusiasm ! 
Douglas forgot his party in his love of country, and 
in noble words, which proved to be his dying utter- 
ances, called on his followers to rally round the ad- 
ministration of his successful rival. From East to 
West, from West to East, the great tide rolled and 



UNION, VICTORY, AND FREEDOM. T7 

surged. The voice that went up from New York 
and New England was answered back from the 
prairies of the Great West, nor did its echoes die 
away till they blended with the waves of the Pacific. 
Startled, fired by that resounding blow at Sumter, a 
great people, who could not believe that American 
hands would point hostile cannon at the American 
flag, stood forth as one man to avenge the nation's 
insult. And then commenced the great rush of citi- 
zen soldiery toward the beleagured capital. From 
every loyal State the concentric lines poured their 
thousands of brave men who carried the nation's 
hopes on their strong arms and flashing bayonets. 
O, it was a grand sight ! A glorious chapter in our 
nation's history. The world's annals have not any- 
where produced its parallel. 

WHY NOT UNANIMITY NOW ? ' — OBJECTIONS TO 
THE CONDUCT OF THE WAR. 

Yes, there was unanimity in the beginning of the 
war. Why not now ? 

It is urged that the war has not been prosecuted 
in the right way and for right objects ; that, instead 
of being now a war for the restoration of the Union, 
it has become "an abolition war," "a war to free the 
negro." Is this objection just or true, and does it 
furnish any excuse for opposition to the administra- 
tion or sympathy with the rebellion ? 

As incident to the prosecution of the war, the ad- 
ministration has been compelled to deal with the 
institution that caused it. Slavery not only first dis- 
turbed the national harmony between the sections 
and in the public councils, not only fired the first 



78 UNION, VICTORY, AND FREEDOM. 

shot at Sumter, but it stood right in the way of our 
advancing armies. There it was, not a principle, 
not a sentiment, but a great practical fact. How 
could it be overlooked ; how could it be avoided "^ 
I think I do not go too far when I say that the ad- 
mini.stration, at the outset, tried to overlook it and 
avoid it. Against the judgment of many of its best 
friends, it dealt slowly and very tenderly with the 
institution. Notwithstanding the everywhere con- 
ceded fact that slavery caused the war, and the 
inevitable conclusion that but for slavery the war 
would not continue an hour ; and notwithstanding 
the fact, clear to all men who wished to see the truth, 
that slavery was a source of power, an element of 
strength to the rebellion, — it was more than a year 
before the administration ceased to protect it ; it 
was more than a year that our armies committed 
the unparalleled folly of guarding the property of 
rebels ; more than a year we drove out of our lines 
strong men who wished to help us ; more than a year 
we used our brave soldiers to execute the Fugitive 
Slave Law for rebel masters ! 

You and I, in common with the great majority of 
loyal citizens, protested against this policy as suicidal 
and wrong. I do not allude to this here and now to 
criticize the administration for that which is past, 
but to defend it against objections to the different 
policy which it has since been compelled to adopt. 
It is well to remind those who now clamor against 
the antislavery measures of the government, that 
during the first year and a half of this war their 
peculiar views, and not ours, were adopted, and that 
neither victory nor peace, but only humiliation came 



UNION, VICTORY, AND FREEDOM. 79 

as their fruit. It was a hard and severe school in 
which the cabinet at Washington learned the wisdom 
which they have since used in the prosecution of 
the war. 

In the light of the last two-years' experience, it 
must always be a subject of amazement how there 
could ever have been a doubt as to the proper course 
to be pursued with the slavery question. It would 
certainly look like one of the plainest things in the 
world, as an abstract proposition, that in a life-and- 
death struggle between twenty millions of people on 
one side, and twelve millions on the other, it would 
be of the very highest and first importance to detach 
four millions from the twelve millions, making them 
friends instead of enemies, and using their superior 
knowledge of the country, their moral and physical 
strength, in the contest with the eight millions that 
should be left. And if we suppose the war to have 
been on account of these four millions, and they con- 
stituting the only laboring element of the popula- 
tion, upon which the eight millions must depend for 
needed supplies and support for their families and 
their armies, without which they could not carry on 
the war for a single day, then our principle, our illus- 
tration, is so clear that only the grossest stupidity 
can question it. 

THE CASE STATED. 

This is precisely the case here. Here in the lines 
of our enemy is this institution of slavery which 
caused the war, and here is this slave population of 
nearly four millions. They are the servile, menial 
element of Southern society, from the law of slavery 



80 UNION, VICTORY, AND FREEDOM. 

and the very necessities of their situation doing the 
work and tilling the fields of the South. The corn 
that feeds the armies of Lee and Johnson and Price 
was planted and tilled by slave labor. The beef 
and bacon that is dealt out in rebel rations, and 
wrought into strength to slay our sons, was raised 
and fattened by slaves. The earthworks and fortifi- 
cations over which our brave troops storm, and from 
which death is rained on their ranks, were built by 
the hands of slaves. The transportation trains that 
carry the supplies for rebel campaigns against us are 
manned and tended by slaves. The fleet horses on 
which rebel cavalry ride in their devastating raids 
are fed and groomed by slaves. In a word, the vast 
and multifarious labor in the rice-fields, the corn- 
fields, the households, the forts and camps of the 
South, without which this gigantic rebellion could 
not live a day, and which underlies it, supports it, 
and upholds it, is all wrung from the sweat and 
sinew of the slave. 

Now let us look at the matter a moment like prac- 
tical, reasonable men, without prejudice. Let us 
forget that it is slavery, the political institution 
which we are talking about, and look at it simply as 
so much moral and physical support to the rebellion. 
The question presents itself: Shall we not only 
refuse to take away this great prop and support of 
our enemy, but go further, and assist him to hold it 
and use it against us .'' Shall we catch and return 
his slaves so that they may build more forts for us 
to take, and raise more corn and bacon for his sol- 
diers ? We devastate his fences and fields, we ride 
his horses, we capture his supplies, we use his houses 



UNION, VICTORY, AND FREEDOM. 81 

for barracks, and his public buildings and churches 
for arsenals and hospitals ; in short, we take and use 
all property, public or private, which will help us 
and cripple the enemy. Shall property in slaves 
only be held sacred .'' All other institutions and 
interests at the South are prostrated before our 
army. Shall the institution which caused all the 
trouble be left unscathed ? Amazing folly ! As 
well turn our guns into our own ranks at once, as 
thus to suffer for want of a plain advantage which 
we will not take. 

THE POLICY NECESSARY AND CONSTITUTIONAL. 

But to these overwhelming facts and reasons it is 
replied that the policy is " unconstitutional." I have 
no dry argument to make, only a word to say upon 
this point. The Constitution was not made, as 
seems to be supposed by some, to perpetuate and 
guarantee human slavery. It was made for the peo- 
ple, for the States, for the nation; to guarantee lib- 
erty to the people, union to the States, and life to 
the nation. And whenever it is necessary that sla- 
very should die in order to maintain these great 
objects, — the LIBERTY OF THE PEOPLE, THE UNION 

OF THE States, the life of the nation, — it is 

CONSTITUTIONAL to slay it. 

In the light of clear proof and abundant and 
bloody experience that time has come ; the necessity 
is upon us, the edict has gone forth. Slavery, the 
great criminal, has conspired against the nation. It 
has endangered the liberty of this people ; it has 
sought, with bloody hands, to break up this glorious 
Union ; it has marshaled vast armies to shed the 
6 



82 UNION, VICTORY, AND FREEDOM. 

blood of our sons and brothers ; it clutches to-day 
at the very throat of the nation. Away with the 
lying pretenses of demagogues, the musty sophistry 
of conservative lawyers, that it is "unconstitutional" 
for the nation to defend its own life by slaying the 
great assassin. Such law as theirs does not come 
from the great masters and the great fountains of 
jurisprudence. Slavery has forfeited its right to live. 
Let it die, then, that the nation may survive, and 
the Constitution itself may be preserved. 

JUSTIFIED BY EXPERIENCE. 

And this policy has been justified by experience. 
Since we have ceased to turn back the slaves from 
our lines, our best and most reliable information has 
come from them. Our soldiers are not now com- 
pelled to wear their lives out in the drudgery of the 
camp, but save their strength for the day of battle 
with the enemy. While they rest, the rifle pit is 
dug, and the redoubt thrown up by their black allies. 
The abandoned fields of rebels have been tilled again 
for the government by their emancipated slaves. 
And, better than all, fifty thousand Union bayonets 
are borne to-day by black soldiers, who have shown 
on more than one bloody field that they can use 
them well and bravely against the common enemy. 

SHALL WE REVERSE THE POLICY ? 

Shall we now reverse this policy ? Shall we re- 
fuse information of the movements and plans of the 
enemy ? Shall we drive away a hundred thousand 
laborers, and make our brave soldiers, weary with 
fighting our battles, do their work ? Shall we dis- 



UNION, VICTORY, AND FREEDOM. 83 

band this army of fifty thousand men in the face of 
the enemy, lose a campaign, and be drafted to fill 
their places ? Who wants all this done ? Is it pos- 
sible that any loyal man desires it ? I do not believe 
it. No man who is a true friend to his country can 
desire such monstrous folly and stultification. No 
friend of that brave army wishes to take away that 
which will lighten their labors and sufferings, and 
assist them to win victories over the foe. No man 
who has any pride in our national history would be 
willing to see the government reverse its policy, and 
go back to the days of slave-catching, servility, and 
folly. 

How can it be possible for men who pretend to be 
loyal to disagree upon this subject ? Can there be 
any question that this policy weakens the enemy 
and strengthens us ? And if t'his be true, the 
" right " of rebel masters to their slaves can not 
be above the " right '' of the government to maintain 
its own existence. What loyal man is injured by it .-^ 
What loyal man is stricken down by it .-' In whose 
interest and behalf, then, are objections to it urged.'' 

A PLATFORM FOR THE " CONSERVATIVES." 

As a test of this whole controversy, and to reduce 
it to a clear issue, suppose the opposition or con- 
servative party go before the American people 
to-morrow with this platform, which embodies the 
substance of all their complaints against the admin- 
istration : — 

1. The solemn and public revocation of the eman- 
cipation proclamation, by President Lincoln. 

2. The repeal by Congress of the confiscation act, 



84 UNION, VICTORY, AND FREEDOM. 

and all other laws passed in derogation of slavery or 
the rights of slaveholders. 

3. The disbanding of all negro regiments, and the 
discharge of all colored laborers for the army and 
the government. 

4. And as a sequence of the foregoing, the re-en- 
slavement and return to his rebel master of every 
slave, soldier or laborer, who may have come within 
our lines. 

How many men in the loyal States could be found 
to rally in support of such a platform ? Dare the 
party which has nominated General Mc Clellan for the 
presidency put him on such a platform ? — No. And 
yet this is only the reduction to a few simple propo- 
sitions of a great mass of doctrines, objections, and 
criticisms which mean this if they mean anything. 
Why denounce the proclamation, which is a/ac/ now 
more than a year old, with such violence, unless its 
revocation be desired .' Why vote in Congress 
against acts which you would not repeal if you had 
the power .^ Why denounce negro regiments so 
bitterly if you would not disband them .'' 

In all this we may see the gross but shallow hyp- 
ocrisy which seeks to build up the interests of party 
and divide the American people at such a time as 
this. The man who should openly advocate the af- 
firmative propositions which I have named would be 
understood at once to be in the interest of the 
enemy. He would in the very act avow himself 
to be against his country. No loyal man wants to 
see the head of his government cringing in apology 
at the feet of rebels and traitors. No loyal man 
wants him to break the faith of the nation by an act 



UNION, VICTORY, AND FREEDOM. 85 

of perfidy, such as can not be found in all history. 
No loyal man desires to cripple the strength of our 
armies, or send back to rebel masters and slavery the 
brave men who have faced danger and received 
honorable wounds in our service. 

.•\RHITK.\KV ARRESTS AND PIIE HABEAS CORPUS. 

But growing out of this subject of slavery, and to 
be treated with it, are other minor objections to the 
conduct of the war. 

It is said that citizens of the loyal States have 
been arbitrarily and unjustly arrested. All that has 
been said upon this subject of "arbitrary arrests" 
may be noticed under two heads. Does the power 
to make them exist in the government ? And if so, 
has it been properly exercised ? 

I shall dismiss these questions with onh- a word of 
answer to each. It may safely be asserted that no 
government ever }et lived and flourished any length 
of time in the world's history that did not exercise 
the right to arrest and seize persons who plotted 
against the state, or were considered dangerous to 
the public safety. It is a necessary, an inherent 
power in all governments. In this country we have 
a clear rule upon the subject. 

The Constitution of the United States provides 
that the writ of habeas corpus ''shall not be sus- 
pended unless when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, 
the public safety may require it." Are not the con- 
ditions for its suspension here fulfilled .' Have we 
not a " rebellion " and "invasion".' Here, to meet 
such a state of things as we have now, it is provided 
that the writ may be " suspended " whenever the 



86 UNION, VICTORY, AND FREEDOM. 

public safety shall require it. Who is to be the 
judge of that emergency if it be not the executive of 
the nation, the head of the civil and military power 
of the government ? Take an illustration: Suppose 
that, in the first days of this rebellion, a man had 
been found conveying papers and letters to the 
rebel authorities, telling them how they could capture 
or destray the capital. He is arrested, and imme- 
diately sues out the writ, and is brought before a 
Virginia or Maryland judge, as great a rebel as him- 
self, and fully in his secret. His release, of course, 
would be certain, and thus, judge and rebel spy 
would work together to break up the government. 
Such a case was then probable ; similar cases did 
actually occur. 

Does any man question the legality or propriety 
of an arrest under such circumstances.-' And if the 
judges are traitors, would it not be well to suspend 
their functions till the nation can be saved ? And 
who can not see, also, that it would be highly detri- 
mental to the public safety, to compel the govern- 
ment to expose in open court the reason for every 
traitor's arrest ? It might defeat the very object of 
the proceeding itself. 

I grant that this power is a very grave one, and to 
be exercised with religious fidelity, and under full 
responsibility to the American people. I fully ac- 
cord with all those eulogies which our " conserva- 
tive " friends have recently pronounced upon this 
great writ of liberty. I only wish they had come 
earlier to a sense of its inestimable value. It would 
have saved them the inconsistency of pleading it 



UNION, VICTORY, AND FREEDOM. 87 

now in behalf of rebels and rebel sympathizers, when 
a little while ago they contemptuously denied it 
to men charged with being fugitive slaves. But 
great as this writ is, and dear as it is to all 
friends of liberty, it is nevertheless subordinate to 
the nation's life — to be used /or the nation and not 
against it. 

The government may in some cases have mis- 
judged individuals, and may have unjustly or upon 
insufficient evidence deprived them of their personal 
liberty for a season ; it would be strange indeed if 
they had not. But I believe that the power has 
been honestly exercised, and with clear purpose for 
the public good. This is enough for the good citi- 
zen to know. You and I and all loyal men feel safe 
in our personal security and liberty. We do not 
fear that we shall be "arbitrarily arrested." Nor 
has the public yet been informed of any very glaring 
case of hardship under this power. It is true we 
hear of " martyrs," and their wrongs have been 
paraded before us. But it is a very singular fact 
that just in proportion as men are lukewarm and 
half patriotic toward their country, and justly sus- 
pected of sympathy with the rebellion, do their 
hearts flow out in tenderness and compassion toward 
these victims of federal oppression. The pilgrims 
who cross the Detroit River to pay their homage to 
the exiled Vallandigham can hardly be considered 
as devoted and unselfish in their patriotism as the 
brave and battle-scarred soldiers of (3hio who cast 
their unanimous and indignant ballots against the 
"martyr" of Windsor. 



88 UNION, VICTORY, AND FREEDOM. 

THE CONSCRIPTION LAW 

I do not forget that, among other objections to 
the management of the war, much has been said of 
the unfairness, the severity and " unconstitutional- 
ity" of the conscription law. The unseemly clamor 
of partizan demagogues and a venal and a half dis- 
loyal press culminated in the legitimate fruit of the 
great New York mob, where an ignorant and brutal 
population acted in deeds of demoniac and fiendish 
violence the teachings of those who slunk away 
before the fury of the storm which they had raised. 
It is natural that the spirit which has hindered volun- 
tary enlistments in the army by unsparing denun- 
ciation of the war, should now oppose the filling of 
our shattered regiments in the field by the compul- 
sory but legitimate process of a draft. In this, as in 
other things, the animus is plain. Every patriot 
knows and feels that the army must be re-enforced 
and sustained, and that his government has the right 
to command the services of the citizen. 

Let the government give up that right, or fail to 
exercise it, and it voluntarily puts an end to its own 
existence. 

"FREE PRESS AND FREE SPEECH." 

Another watchword of the opposition, which 
sounds strangely enough in their mouths, is "free 
speech and a free press," both of which they claim 
have been ruthlessly violated by this administration. 
While I am glad here again to see that our "conserv- 
ative" friends are adopting mottoes and principles 
which have been dear to us so many years, and 
which they have not aforetime been wont to applaud, 



UNION, VICTORY, AND FREEDOM. 89 

I must, nevertheless, dismiss their pretense in this 
case as too puerile for serious argument. 

" Free speech " denied .'' A " free press '* violated ? 
Never were both in fuller and freer exercise in 
America than to-day ; never in any government 
under the sun was so broad a liberty of criticism 
and denunciation allowed. Look into the news- 
papers which bewail most what they call the viola- 
tion of the "liberty of the press.'" They are reeking 
with the very bitterest and coarsest denunciations 
of the government and its policy. Listen to the 
opposition orators who declaim loudest upon " free 
speech." In any other government but ours their 
seditious and incendiary tongues would invite the 
halter. Only could this shameless and ungrateful 
pretense be put forth under the broadest license. 

LINCOLN, THE "TYRANT." 

Kindred to this in preposterous affrontery is the 
appellation of " tyrant," so often applied to our kind- 
hearted and amiable chief magistrate. I confess I 
hardly know how properly to characterize this charge. 
Surely, if ever a ruler was found in all history who 
had in less measure than another the elements of 
cruelty and tyranny in his character, his name is 
Abraham Lincoln. Constitutionally cautious, mild, 
and unselfish, of such abounding good nature and 
sympathy as to amount almost to weakness, his 
friends have more reason to stand in fear of his 
mistaken clemency than his enemies to dread any 
unreasonable severity. 

Lincoln a " tyrant " ! Shades of Dionysius, of Nero 
and Caligula ! When before did the world see suc/t 



90 UNION, VICTORY, AND FREEDOM. 

a tyrant ? What more is needed in fact to show the 
utter absurdity of the pretense than the astounding 
audacity and complete immunity in which it is made ? 

COMPROMISE — QUESTIONS FOR THE OPPOSITION. 

But now, to come back to the main question, I 
submit that if the war was rightly begun by the 
government to vindicate the national authority, it 
follows that it should be prosecuted vigorously till 
that end is accomplished. There can be no question 
or dispute about the fact that when the nation en- 
tered upon this war against the rebellion, the North 
was a unit ; that all parties and all men said it is 
right, it is the only course left for the government. 

Now in the light of this great fact I turn to the 
opposition, and put this question : When, since the 
war began, could it Jiave been successfully or honor- 
ably closed by the government ? 

Has not the South been confronting us all the 
time ? Have the rebel authorities ever proposed to 
submit, or even proffered any terms of conciliation 
or compromise? — Never. On the contrary, does 
not the world know that Jefferson Davis and his fel- 
low traitors in the rebel government have constantly 
and repeatedly avowed their purpose to prosecute 
the war on their part until every federal soldier 
should be driven out of the limits of the pretended 
Confederacy ? This, of course, would be our subju- 
gation. Now in view of this steady and loudly 
avowed purpose of the rebellion, I repeat the ques- 
tion: When was the time that our government should 
have laid down its arms .' 

But, if it be replied that we should have offered 



UNION, VICTORY, AND FREEDOM. 01 

terms to the enemy, then I ask i^'Iiat terms could we 
offer ? Has the goxernment ever claimed anything 
but this, that the rebels should lay down their arms 
and submit ? And was it not to compel them to do 
this that it entered upon the war with the approval and 
full concurrence of these very men of the opposition ? 
Does it not follow that the offer of any terms, short 
of submission, waives and abandons the one great 
and only object of the war ? There is no room for 
compromise compatible with the integrity of the 
government. We lower the flag, and humiliate our- 
selves the moment we propose one. There is a mani- 
fest difference between terms of settlement with the 
pretended Confederacy and terms of pardon to the 
rebels who compose it. The first we can not offer 
without recognition of the enemy as a separate and 
independent power ; the latter have already been 
proffered in the recent proclamation of the president. 
And such terms of pardon were certainly never be- 
fore offered to men equally guilty. If they are not 
accepted by the rebels, what man at the North can 
hereafter have the temerity to plead further excuses 
in their behalf.' 

THE REliELLIOX MUST BE CRUSHED. 

The duty of the government, then, is clear. The 
rebellion must be crusJied. The outraged majesty of 
the nation must be vindicated ; the Union must be 
restored ; the Constitution and the laws must be re- 
spected and obeyed on every foot of federal territory. 
Right on, through all difficulties, over all obstacles, 
in the face of all dangers, the administration must 
press till this great end be accomplished. Nothing 



92 UNION, VICTORY, AND FREEDOM. 

short of this will perform their duty to the American 
people, or discharge the solemn trust they hold for 
all future ages. They must not, they can not, give 
up the struggle. God has devolved upon them a 
responsibility such as perhaps never rested before 
upon mortal men. History will hold them to a stern 
account for their stewardship. 

A TRIBUTE TO THE ARMY. 

But the administration can not alone crush this 
rebellion. It is a work for the army and the people. 

Need I say that the army has done and is doing 
its part .' Our hearts swell with mingled pride and 
gratitude at the thought of what that army has done. 
Its deeds will ever constitute an immortal chapter in 
our history. If we look to the West, we see the 
rebellion, which in the beginning claimed Missouri 
and even confronted us at St. Louis, give way before 
the steady and resistless advance of our victorious 
troops, bearing the old flag over the ramparts of 
Henry and Donelson, through the fiery baptism of 
Shiloh, and up the rugged and almost impregnable 
steeps of Vicksburg, till they meet at Fort Hudson 
the same starry emblem of the Union which their 
brothers had borne in triumph from the Gulf, and 
celebrate with them the redemption of the Mississippi. 

In the center, the brave army of the Cumberland 
has pushed its way to the Gulf States, redeeming 
Middle and Eastern Tennessee, and gathering im- 
perishable luster to its standards on the bloody and 
glorious field of Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, and 
Chattanooga. And if the brave but mismanaged 
Army of the Potomac has not yet taken the rebel 



UNION, VICTORY, AND FREEDOiM. 93 

capital, it has nevertheless amply vindicated its own 
fame, and saved the nation's life in the three immortal 
days at Gettysburg. Nor should we forget that its 
banners are still bright with the glory of South 
Mountain and Antietam. 

And these victories and conquests which have 
shattered the rebel armies, recovered their territory, 
and given hope and life to the nation, have been won 
by a noble self-sacrifice, by unconquerable bravery, 
by hardships, sufferings, and death. O, what does 
not the country owe to its brave and gallant citizen 
soldiers, who have borne its cause through the iron 
hail of battle! I bow in reverence before these 
heroes of the Republic. Let the survivors come 
back to a generous welcome and to long lives of 
honor in our midst. It shall be passport and glory 
enough for them to say : We fought for the Union 
in the great Civil war. 

And for the dead, let their memories and their 
deeds forever live in green remembrance. The 
blood-stained fields on which they fell shall ever 
after be holy ground. Let the warm rains and the 
bright skies of that sunny South which they helped 
to win back to the L^nion and bless with liberty for- 
evermore, keep in fadeless bloom the flowers that 
grow upon their honored graves. Build monuments 
on the glorious fields where they fell, to tell all coming 
ages the story of their devotion, and to link their fame 
forever with that of the heroes of the Revolution. 
Write their names deep in the heart of the nation's 
gratitude ; inscribe them high in the Pantheon of 
the nation's glory. Let the Republic pay immortal 
honors to her martyred defenders. 



94 UNION, VICTORY, AND FREEDOM. 

A WORK FOR THE PEOPLE. 

And in this great work of saving the nation, the 
people must support the government, and encourage 
the army with steady and hopeful purpose. In an 
age like this, moral power is one of the great forces 
which move the world. The administration are but 
the peoples servants, and no war can be long sus- 
tained or prosecuted in the midst of public indiffer- 
ence, or in the face of adverse popular opinion. 

We need to remember this lesson which all history 
teaches, and to realize the fact that we can not em- 
barrass and oppose the administration without aiding 
the enemy. The rebel leaders themselves could desire 
no better assistance than those men at the North are 
rendering, who seek to weaken the confidence of the 
people in their administration, and to throw obstacles 
in the way of the prosecution of the war. The 
rebellion can be served in Michigan and Ohio, as 
well as in South Carolina or Virginia. All men are 
not patriots who escape the legal penalties of treason. 
He who stands by when his country is in danger, 
and ridicules and opposes the efforts put forth to 
save her, and frames excuses and apologies for her 
enemies, is a moral traitor, equally guilty, in the 
forum of conscience, with the Southern rebel who 
dares to face the consequences of his acts. 

The men at the North who thus render ''aid and 
comfort" to the rebellion may escape the courts, 
may escape the judgment of the law, but they can 
not escape history, nor hide away from the just con- 
tempt and indignation of the American people, 
which shall lash and scourge them while living, and 



UNION, VICTORY, AND FREEDOM. 95 

blast their memories after they are dead. There are 
men in our midst who are to-day making records 
that will be a mountain of shame upon their poster- 
ity for generations to come. 

Who can not see that the last and ftnly hope of 
the South is in our divisions and dissensions } Who 
can not see that it is only needed that there be 
unanimity at the North to make victory certain and 
speedy .' The great rebellion already totters to its 
fall. Its armies are everywhere defeated, its area is 
circumscribed, its finances are ruined. Cut nearly 
in twain by our gallant armies, its sources of sup- 
plies are nearly exhausted. A cry of despair and 
desperation already rings throughout the borders of 
the Confederacy. And notwithstanding the tremen- 
dous struggle in which the nation has been engaged, 
we are at this moment in the midst of unparalleled 
prosperity. Vast as have been our expenditures of 
men and money, our resources for both have not yet 
begun to fail. In this wonderful experience, we 
have realized the seeming paradox written upon the 
monument of the great Lord Chatham, at Guildhall, 
" Commerce has been united with, and made to flour- 
ish by, war." 

Thank God, we are nearer now to that unanimity 
which is only needed to give us victory than we 
were a year ago. The recent popular elections 
in the loyal States have revealed and made sure the 
fact that the voice of the people is still for war, 
while a single rebel remains in arms against the gov- 
ernment. The battles fought and won at the polls 
last fall, in the great States of New York, Pennsyl- 
vania, and Ohio, were victories over the common 



96 UNION, VICTORY, AND FREEDOM. 

enemy South and North, the importance of which to 
the cause of the Union can scarcely be overesti- 
mated. And hardly less significant is the recent 
change of policy in the ranks of the opposition. 
They, too, begin to see the meaning of the great 
popular verdict, and to set their tattered sails to 
catch the stiff Northern breezes. The recent apos- 
tles of peace are now becoming the champions 
of war. 

THE BLACK SOLDIERS OF THE UNION. 

Nor are these the only omens that cheer us on to 
victory. There are others of still deeper signifi- 
cance. In the great rush and sweep of events 
around us, ideas of progress and liberty are making 
gigantic strides. The despotism of slavery, which 
for seventy years has brooded over this country, is 
already broken, and its prejudices are being scat- 
tered and dispelled. Two years ago, the negro, the 
innocent cause of all our troubles, was denied any 
part in the war, was only a shuttlecock between its 
contending forces. So great was the prejudice, even 
among loyal men, against those who were our nat- 
ural friends and allies ! To-day fifty thousand col- 
ored troops attest the great advance which has been 
made in public opinion. Thus out of that wicked 
and barbarous institution, to perpetuate which this 
war was begun, are being forged the thunderbolts 
which are to dash it in pieces. God's providence is 
higher and deeper than man's wisdom. 

And these sable warriors will fight. The bloody 
parapets of Wagner, the heroic defense of Miliken's 
Bend, and the forlorn assault at Port Hudson have 



UNION, VICTORY, AND FREEDOM. 97 

proved this. The world will recognize courage, 
though it has failed to appreciate long-suffering 
meekness and patience under tyranny and oppres- 
sion. In the eyes even of proslavery prejudice, the 
negro is henceforth a Dian. How these flaming 
lights of war drive away the darkness and make 
clear the truth ! Here was this great problem of 
slavery and the negro race, which has perplexed 
and tried the statesman and the philanthropist, and 
for these many years the questions have been pain- 
fully and doubtfully asked, '' What shall we do with 
slavery .'' Can we abolish it with safety to the white 
race .'* Is the negro prepared for freedom .-' Or is 
he not, after all, an inferior order of being, and 
divinely intended for servitude .-' '" 

The light which we could not read in history, or 
borrow from the experience or counsel of men, now 
flashes from the cannon's mouth and glances from 
fifty thousand polished bayonets. The black sol- 
diers of the Union have cut with their swords this 
Gordian knot of races and of liberty. The emanci- 
pated slave who strikes a brave blow at this rebel- 
lion, is aiding to redeem his own downtrodden race 
while he fights our battles, and shall henceforth be a 
freeman of the Republic. 

ONE MORE GREAT EFFORT. 

And now it only remains for this people to put 
forth one more united and great effort, and then will 
come victory and peace. 

And not only these but Liberty. Slavery, that 
great organized barbarism, shall die with the rebel- 
lion which it caused. The sublime edict for its 



98 UNION, VICTORY, AND FREEDOM. 

destruction has gone forth, and the steady hand that 
wrote it has assured the world that it shall not be 
revoked. Well for the president whose name it 
shall make immortal, well for the country which 
it shall save and redeem, well for humanity which it 
serves and ennobles, that this promise shall be kept. 
The bending heavens which have recorded it will 
rain down blessings, and beam forever with God's 
approval, upon the land which has been just to 
the slave. 

Out of this great convulsion, this greatest civil 
war of the ages, will come new ideas and guarantees 
of liberty and free government. Coming forth from 
this fiery baptism of war, the nation will know and 
appreciate the cost of its salvation ; will guard 
against dangers, and lay deeper and firmer still its 
foundations in the enduring principles of justice, 
equality, and freedom. The great torches which 
serve to guide us out of this darkness will gleam on 
our pathway forevermore. 

No, it is not in vain that the nation endures this 
great trial. Such convulsions are divinely appointed 
agencies to clear and purify the political, as storms 
and tornadoes the natural, atmosphere. See what 
has already been done. Slavery, which has dark- 
ened our national sky and tainted our national air ; 
slavery, which has threatened to drag our nation 
down in disgrace and dishonor, against which good 
men have labored, and voted, and prayed for long, 
weary years, almost, as it seemed, in vain ; slavery, 
which was rooted in the customs, the prejudices, and 
wrongs of fifty centuries, defying the world's con- 
science and mocking the Christianity and civiliza- 



UNION, VICTORY, AND FREEDOM. 99 

tion of the age. in the short space of a year is nearly- 
consumed in this hot tornado of war. And before 
the fiery tempest shall pass, its last vestige will be 
gone. Thank God and take courage, O patriot 
heart ; for the storm has reached its height and is 
now passing away ! Already its lurid lightnings 
gleam more fitfully in the Southern sky, and its rum- 
bling thunders die away in the receding distance. 
We breathe the pure air once more, while from 
above shines out gloriously through these battle 
clouds the sun of righteousness and liberty. 



THE TRIAL OF REPUBLICAN INSTI- 
TUTIONS/ 



Mr. President and Felloiv Citi:;ens : 

We are met to celebrate the event that made 
us a nation, after four years of bloody struggle for 
national life have consecrated the work of 76 and re- 
deemed the pledges of its immortal Declaration. 
By a most happy conjunction we may enlarge the 
significance of the occasion, and embrace in our 
thoughts to-day not only national birth, but its grand 
historic complement — National regeneration. 

It is a day for rejoicing. But not in mere noisy 
jubilation shall we find expression for the deep feel- 
ings of our hearts. We lay upon the altar of our 
country to-day offerings of joy, and pride, and patri- 
otic purpose, such as mere words or sounds are 
feeble to express. And, above all, we look up into 
the heavens with hearts overflowing with gratitude 
for our recent great national deliverance. God of 
our fathers, we thank thee that thou didst not let the 
nation die, but gave it, instead, a more glorious life ! 

I shall speak to you on this occasion upon topics 
born out of our earlier and later history, and such as 
concern our near future. Not in any spirit of parti- 
zanship or narrow prejudice shall I address you, but 
under the broader and purer inspiration of love for 
our common and reunited country ; of pride in her 

' An oration delivered at Jackson, Mich., July 4, 1865. The Veteran 
25th Michigan Infantry, just arrived to to he mustered out, marched in 
the procession and was massed before the speaker's stand. 
100 



THE TRIAL OF REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS. 101 

great history, and enthusiastic confidence in her 
future career. If I should speak in the passions or 
prejudices of the hour, I might be false or censori- 
ous. Rut if I look above the men and parties of to- 
day to our great historic landmarks and principles, 
I shall be neither. It is always safer to follow 
celestial luminaries. 

The American Republic has now had two grand 
epochs, or organizing periods. The first was from 
1776 to 1787. from the time of the Declaration of In- 
dependence to the adoption of the Constitution ; the 
second is the period through which we have just 
passed, from 1861 to 1865. These two periods are 
the Experiment and the Trial of republican institu- 
tions. - 

The grand idea of the Revolution of 1776 was 
Liberty. " We hold these truths to be self-evident," 
says the Declaration, "that all men are created 
equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with 
certain inalienable rights ; that among these are life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." And in this 
strain spoke also the great leaders and controlling 
spirits of the Revolution. The effort was to throw 
off the yoke of British oppression, and to secure 
independence for the colonies. Thus the Declara- 
tion, after recounting the grievances which they had 
suffered under the rule of the British king and Parlia- 
ment, closes with the solemn assertion " that these 
united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and 
independent States ; that they are absolved from all 
allegiance to the British crown, and that all political 
connection between them and the State of Great 
Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved." 



102 THE TRIAL OF REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS. 

But when the Revolution had become successful, 
when the British Cabinet had recognized the inde- 
pendence of the colonies, then the great remaining 
object of the struggle was to found and consolidate 
a separate nationality. While the struggle lasted, 
liberty was the only watchword, independence the 
only aim, and these absorbed every effort and energy 
of the people. But now that these were secured, 
they must be preserved, enjoyed, and transmitted to 
posterity. 

So the soul of liberty that flamed out in the throes 
of that great contest took on the body of the Consti- 
tution, and the American Revolution passed into the 
American nation. 

This was the consummation and crowning glory of 
the work of 1776 — the effort of organization which 
followed that of demolition. Who doubts that it was 
the purpose of our fathers to found a civil state, to 
launch into the world a new nation } The thirteen 
colonies which had fought out the Revolution under 
the old articles of confederation and the Continental 
Congress were not organized into so many petty 
independet States, but the temporary league was 
abandoned, and through the permanent Constitu- 
tion of 1787 the whole were united in a common and 
lasting Union, under the title of " the United States 
of America." And this was a Union not made by the 
colonies as such, representing so many newly acquired 
sovereignties, but by the People of all the colonies 
alike, in their original and primary capacity. So 
the preamble of the Constitution of 1787 sets out: 
We, the People of the United States, in order to 
form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure 



THE TRIAL OF REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS. 103 

domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense 
promote the general welfare, and secure the bless- 
ings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." 

And so the debates in the convention, and the 
contemporaneous writings and speeches of the framers 
and authors of the Constitution, show conclusively 
this same great purpose to lay the foundations, to 
hew out the majestic framework of a new govern- 
ment, and to consolidate a new and great nation. In 
this I am not using argument, but statement. I do 
not propose to go again into a controversy which 
has at last been authoritatively settled by the sword. 
Rut this is a part of our history with which I have 
to do to-day. 

I say this period was the experiment of our insti- 
tutions. In founding the American Republic our 
fathers made a wide and seemingly hazardous depart- 
ure from the ancient systems. Not fully confident 
themselves, oppressed with some doubts and mis- 
givings, as their published declarations show, the 
framers of the Constitution, the great organizers of 
the period, exhausted their own wisdom in the work, 
and, invoking upon it the blessing of God, submitted 
it to the test of time and history. 

With the adoption of the Constitution the nation 
started in a career of unexampled prosperity. The 
new Republic waxed strong and great. State after 
State was carved out of the wilderness and added to 
the Union. The almost exhaustless resources of a 
great continent, fitted for the home of a noble people, 
were developed by industry and enterprise, fostered 
and stimulated by intelligence and liberty, and 
poured with prodigal wealth into the lap of the 



104 THE TRIAL OF REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS. 

nation. The arts of peace and civilization abounded 
and flourished on every hand ; while in war, on the 
land and on the sea, we had maintained the prowess 
of our Revolutionary origin, had defended our terri- 
tory, asserted our just rights, and chastised foreign 
nations. Our progress and power were the wonder 
of the world, the marvel of history. The expe7'ivie)it, 
it would seem, had proved successful — the Republic 
was invincible and immortal. 

At the opening dawn of this great prosperity, but 
after their eyes could catch the glorious vision of 
what was to come and their ears drink in the music 
of the future, the great leaders of the Revolution and 
founders of the Constitution, following the order of 
nature, passed to their rest. Heaven had vouchsafed 
to them to live long enough to see the fruits of their 
labors, to hear the loud acclaim of posterity, and to 
be gladdened with the thought that their great work 
had survived all its dangers, and was now fully 
launched upon a stormless and unruffled sea. Happy 
for them that they were unable to discern in the 
background of this bright picture the terrible spectre 
of our great Civil war, and that on the cloudless sky 
upon which rested their aged, eager eyes they saw 
not the reflection of its crimson hues. 

No ; the great trial of our institutions had not 
come. All this abounding prosperit}' and progress 
were but postponing it. It was well that the fathers 
and patriarchs should sleep first. They had done 
their work well. It was fortunate also that the 
nation should grow so large and strong and so in the 
focus of the world's civilization that when the trial 
should come its result might settle the great question 



THE TRIAL OF REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS. 105 

of republican institutions not only for us, and for a 
day, but for the world, and for all time. 

The g^reat danger that had been feared in the 
practical working of our institutions lay in a misun- 
derstanding of the relative powers and duties of the 
States and the general government, in our complex 
system of government. Back of this, of course, was 
always the general question of the capacity of the 
people for self-government, the intelligence and 
virtue necessary to sustain popular and democratic 
institutions. Would the States keep their proper 
places in the Union, and maintain their just relations 
to the central government .■' Could the people at 
large be safely trusted with the administration of the 
powers of government through agents chosen for 
brief periods, and by the exercise of the broadest 
popular suffrage .-' These were the great questions to 
be settled in our experience. 

It is probable that no difficulty would ever have 
been found in the settlement of the question of the 
relations of the States with the federal government, 
but for the existence of the institution of African 
slavery, an institution which, during most of our 
history, has been peculiar to a part of the States, 
and not common to all. This institution, always 
obnoxious to the moral sense of mankind, and for 
many years regarded by the people of the non-slave- 
holding States as an unfortunate exception in our 
general republican system, and an element of danger 
to the Republic, was seized upon by its advocates to 
stimulate the dangerous heresy, of "State rights;" 
and at last, upon the election of Mr. Lincoln to the 
presidency, under the pretext of unjust discrimina- 



106 THE TRIAL OF REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS. 

tion against, and tyrannical interference with, the 
institutions and rights of the States, to force the 
South into open revolt against the government. 

I do not propose to go over the ground of the long 
and angry discussion of the slavery question which 
preceded this resort to the umpire of the sword. In 
the bloody and terrible experiences of the last four 
years we ha.ve settled the question of the existence 
of slavery itself, have settled the question of " State 
rights," and, in settling these, have put to rest the 
broader and anterior question of the intelligence, 
virtue, and capacity of the people to maintain 
popular institutions and government. Thus do revo- 
lutions burn away in the flames of battle the wrongs, 
the errors, and sophistries of human governments and 
institutions. 

In this great trial through which our government 
has just passed, we have been threatened with most 
appalling dangers. In the very nature of the contest, 
in the very issue made up between the government 
and the rebellion, we were threatened with national 
dismemberment and overthrow. The insurgent 
States were a part of our own territory. The suc- 
cess of their revolt would divide the nation, leaving 
us only a part, with most serious danger of still 
further disintegration. Had the rebellion succeeded, 
had the Southern Confederacy been established and 
recognized by us on the ground claimed, of th aright 
of a State or States to withdraw from the Union, it 
is doubtful if the old Union and t he old government 
could have been long maintained, especially in such 
near proximity to an embittered and successful rival, 
and under the frowns of unfriendly foreign nations. 



THE TRIAL OF REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS. 107 

lUit had we escaped national overthrow, we could 
ont have escaped national humiliation. To have 
been beaten in this great contest ; to have sur- 
rendered a third of the population, and more than 
half of the territory of the Union ; to have retired 
from the soil whereon our ancestors won a common 
glory and shared a common prosperity ; to have 
trailed the old flag before the hated emblems of re- 
volt and slavery, — this would have been shame 
unendurable and crushing. 

Back of all that which threatened us with national 
humiliation and national destruction ; back of the 
shameless pretenses and lies, and the insolent defi- 
ance of the Southern rebellion ; back of its legions 
which smote us in battle ; back of its unnumbered 
horrors and cruelties, its Libbys and Andersonvilles, 
stood Slavery, the great assassin and criminal — 
grim, barbarous, devilish ; inspiring, guiding, and 
controlling all, and threatening, in the event of our 
defeat, to overrun the continent with its long train 
of evils and atrocities, and to destroy every vestige 
of republican freedom. 

Out of these great perils the nation has come in 
victory and triumph. What has saved us .-* 

First, under God, the nation has been saved by 
the /'<'?/;-/6'//.s-;// and unwavering loyalty of the great 
body of the people. This is the people's government ; 
and more than any statesmanship, more than any 
generalship even, their love, their courage, their 
constancy, have saved it. And herein has been 
furnished the finest and noblest instance of loyalty 
that history records. It was not a loyalty to 
throne or potentate, nor to any administration, nor 



108 THE TRIAL OF REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS. 

to government even, as such, but to institutions of 
civil liberty — to the Republic. Knowing what it 
had cost our fathers to found this nation ; appreciat- 
ing its vast influence for good among the nations, and 
its unnumbered blessings for them and their pos- 
terity, the great body of the loyal people caught the 
full significance of the contest opened at Sumter, and 
entered upon the defense of the Republic with a 
divine enthusiasm. From that hour the struggle 
was never doubtful. The greatest danger was 
passed when compromise gave way for the sword. 

But the will and purpose of the people to save 
their government must be manifested through vari- 
ous agencies, and to these, as secondary means, do 
we largely owe our success. Statesmanship must 
guide the vast resources of the country in men and 
money, and generalship must give us victory in the 
field. 

I shall not enter upon a review of the civil admin- 
istration of the government during the great strug- 
gle that has just closed. Perhaps this is not the 
occasion ; certainly I have not the time to do it. 
Only in a very general way will I remark that if the 
statesmanship which presided over our councils dur- 
ing these memorable four years of civil war was not 
always of the highest order of wisdom and sagacity, 
it was nevertheless patient, patriotic, and willing to 
learn new duties and take higher positions as the 
vast, unfolding exigencies of the struggle made 
them necessary. It was a statesmanship that trusted 
but did not anticipate the people — perhaps some- 
times lagged behind them. But whatever mistakes 
it may have committed, I believe its motive was 



THE TRIAL OF REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS. 109 

always religiously tnic to the people, and that his- 
tor}' will so write it. In saying this I seek not in 
any sense to revive the political controversies of the 
past. I stand here to-day as neither the critic nor 
the eulogist of the late administration, and I speak 
of it only because its acts are a part of the history 
of the country at its most memorable epoch, and 
have to do with the theme which I am discussing. 
Whatever may be said of the administration of 
President Lincoln, all candid men will admit that in 
meeting the weight and shock of this great war, so 
suddenly precipitated upon the nation, it encoun- 
tered fearful and unprecedented responsibilities ; and 
that in bringing it to a successful issue it fully vindi- 
cated its main policy, and deserved well of the coun- 
try. The statesmanship which has pure motive, 
and is crowned with success, is always embalmed 
in history. 

I should be untrue to myself if I did not say that 
to the policy of emancipation adopted by the late 
lamented president, in accordance with the wishes 
of a majority of the loyal millions, we are largely, if 
not chiefly, indebted for our national salvation. All 
men know now that it was slavery which made war 
on the Republic ; though all men are not willing yet 
to concede the necessity of the blow aimed for its 
destruction. But the time will surely come when all 
men shall see that the policy which struck down the 
great assassin of the nation, and at the same time 
put arms into the hands of a hundred and fifty thou- 
sand black soldiers, and arrayed the government on 
the side of liberty and justice, was born of the high- 
est patriotism and the noblest statesmanship. I 



110 THE TRIAL OF RETUBLICAN INSTITUTION'S. 

believe that the proclamation of Jan. 1, 18<'>3, was the 
greatest and the sublimest cival act of the century ; 
that it was necessary, expedient, and just ; that it 
added immediately and immensely to the material 
and moral forces of the Union, and contributed 
directly and powerfully to the overthrow of the 
rebellion, and gives us now a Union not only re- 
stored 3 t free. 

Aside from the physical advantages it brought to 
the cause of the Union in its hundred and fifty thou- 
sand stalwart colored soldiers, and in crippling the 
strength of the enemy, its moral effect was great 
beyond calculation. As mind controls matter, so 
are moral forces greater than physical. This great 
act of justice touched the noblest springs of charac- 
ter in our own people, and arrayed on the side of the 
Union the world's conscience and the world's civili- 
zation. After that not only the North with its 
twenty millions and its vast resources ; not only the 
cabinet at Washington ; not only the veteran armies 
of Grant and Sherman ; but all the generous sym- 
pathies of mankind, all the hopes of progress, the 
beacons of knowledge, the aspirations of liberty, 
the stars in their courses, fought against the South- 
ern rebellion. 

But with all other helps and aids the Union must 
have been lost but for the steady and unconquerable 
heroism of our army, and the able and almost match- 
less generalship that finally led it to victory. How 
can I find words to speak the just eulogy of this army 
of citizen soldiers, or to express the deep gratitude 
which a nation feels for their heroic sufferings and 
achievements ! How forever thrilling and immortal 



THE TRIAL OF RErUHITCAN INSTITUTIONS. Ill 

will be that chapter in our history which recounts 
that when the Republic was assailed by organized 
and banded treason in which eleven States partici- 
pated ; with a treasury despoiled and empty ; a navy 
scattered on distant seas, and an army hardly large 
enough for a nucleus of organization, and now in- 
fected with treachery ; at the cry of danger a mil- 
lion men sprung from the fields, the workshops, the 
stores, and the schools of the North, and gave their 
loyal hearts and their brave arms to the defence of 
the nation. It was the rally of the people to save 
the peoples government. That swelling and sublime 
tide of enthusiasm which shook the nation when 
Sumter was bombarded, did not ebb till it had borne 
the Republic on its generous bosom through the 
storm and the tempest into a harbor of peace and 
safety. 

I can not follow that army through the varying 
fortunes, the successes and reverses of this great war. 
That gigantic task only history can perform. In the 
magnitude and extent of its operations ; in the num- 
ber and importance of its battles and sieges, as well 
as in the unapproachable grandeur of its issue, there 
has never been such a war as this. And through 
this vast and bloody panorama, on the hundred 
great battle-fields of the South, where the sons of the 
Cavaliers met the descendants of the Puritans, 
Northern courage and Northern endurance have 
been written out in successive chapters of glory 
which time will never efface. The genius of history 
and the muse of poesy as they transmit the great 
record and sing the great Iliad through the ages are 
only adequate for a theme so vast. 



112 THE TRIAL OF REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS. 

I see before me to day, in this civic and peaceful 
procession, the toil-worn and battle-scarred repre- 
sentatives of this army of heroes. 

Soldiers and saviours of the Republic ! In the 
name of the thousands of your fellow citizens here 
assembled, I bid you welcome to this jubilee. We 
greet you with hearts full of love., and gratitude, and 
pride. During the four terrible years that have 
passed, your strong arms and manly bosoms, inter- 
posed between us and the enemies of our country, 
have been our wall of protection and defence. You 
have but just returned from the fields made forever 
memorable by your courage and valor in this great 
struggle for national life. In your number are those 
who have fought on nearly all the great battle-fields 
of this war. You followed the rising star of Grant 
down the banks of the Mississippi, over the ramparts 
of Henry and Donelson, through the murky smoke 
and sheeted flame of Shiloh, and up the frowning 
battlements of Vicksburg. You fought with Rosecrans 
at Stone River, and stood fast in the earth-rooted 
ranks of the stern hero Thomas, when the army was 
rescued in the terrible day at Chickamauga. You 
helped to save the day, and the nation, too, in the 
thunderous shock of Gettysburg, when the solid ranks 
went down like summer grass before the mower's 
scythe. And you went through the seven days of 
battle, and sent back from sulphurous Malvern your 
victorious defiance to the foe before whom you had 
retreated, but by whom you had not been vanquished. 
You charged through the bloody labyrinths of the 
Wilderness, over the storm-swept field of Spott- 
sylvania, and followed in that march of battles which 



THE TRIAL OF REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS. 113 

closed its sure embrace around the doomed and 
finally captured chief army and chief city of the rebel- 
lion. You swept in the fierce onset of Sheridan and 
Custer in the Shenandoah ; and you have a part in 
the glory of that great host which followed the ban- 
ners of Sherman in the grandest march of history, 
when he rounded the majestic circle through (Geor- 
gia and the Carolinas ! 

Heroic defenders of your country, survivors of so 
many trials and dangers, God has graciously spared 
your lives, and permitted you to come back in glory 
and honor to your friends, your families, and your 
homes. A nation's hopes and prayers followed you 
into battle ; a nation's benedictions and blessings 
hail your victorious return. And for your comrades 
fallen on all the fields where you fought, a nation's 
tears and a nation's homage embalm their memories 
among the priceless treasures of the Republic. Mar- 
tyrs to the great cause of civil liberty, of love and 
devotion to country and law, their fame is linked 
forever with the earlier heroes of the nation, and will 
grow brighter and brighter with lapsing ages. 

And he, the chiefest martyr of all who fell, — the 
honored head of the army and the nation, — so pure 
so noble and magnanimous, and so gentle and simple 
in his life, withal, that republican institutions found 
in him their fittest and noblest type and representa- 
tive, — how his foul murder froze the nation's heart 
with horror, and choked the nation's voice with grief. 
The noblest sacrifice which the country has made in 
this war, he has gone to join the glorious army of 
heroes and martyrs whose blood has consecrated 
this great struggle for nationality, and whose spirits 



114 THE TRIAL OF REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS. 

now look down upon the land they helped to save 
and redeem. To each and all of them we may say: — 

" If aught of things that here befall 

Touch a spirit among things divine; 
If love of country move thee there at all, 

Be glad, because his bones are laid by thine I 
And thro' the centuries let a people's voice 

In full acclaim: 
A people's voice. 

The proof and echo of all human fame; 
A people's voice when they rejoice 
• At civic revel and pomp and game, 

Attest their great commander's claim 
With honor, honor, honor to him. 
Eternal honor to his name." 

And thus has the nation been saved ; and not only 
saved, but purified, redeemed, and regenerated. 
Every foot of our territory has been reconquered 
from the enemy, every iota of our just authority has 
been reasserted in every nook and corner of the 
rebel 'i'^'"' Slavery, the great disturber of the public 
peace, and author of all our mischiefs and dangers, 
has gone down forever beneath the waves of civil 
strife which its own fell spirit lashed into fury. We 
have emerged from the great conflict free, strong, 
and confident. In the vast resources which we have 
developed, in the tremendous military strength which 
we have put forth, as well as in the now embodied 
sentiment of patriotism and love of country which 
we have evoked, we have a sure guaranty not only 
against future rebellions, but also against foreign 
interference. Warned ourselves by this fearful ex- 
ample, the nation will hereafter tread out the sparks 
of sedition before they flame up into open insur- 



THE TRIAL OF REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS. 115 

rection, and foreign powers who have watched with 
an:iazement our suppression of this gigantic revolt, 
will so temper their diplomacy as not unnecessarily 
to provoke a contest with a Republic which can call 
into the field and equip and sustain, during four years 
of war, more than two millions of men. 

Safe, then, in our just authority and rights, at home 
and abroad, the problem of future national destiny 
and greatness lies all with us. I know there is still 
danger that we may not reap all the just fruits of our 
great victory, and may hinder and delay the upward 
springing march of freedom and civilization on this 
continent. But I pause on the threshold of the 
great questions and problems of reconstruction. 
Perhaps this is not the fit time and occasion to 
discuss them. May God give wisdom to our presi- 
dent and cabinet, so that nothing^ be done unwisely 
or in haste ; but, taking full time for reflection, the 
government reassert its authority in the rebellious 
States in such mercy and mildness as shall be com- 
patible with justice and law ; in such recognition of 
the full manhood and citizenship of the emancipated 
slave as shall comport with the national sense of the 
wrongs he has already suffered and the service he 
has rendered us ; and above all, in such manner as 
shall inure to the full safety of our national future. 

And now, under this sun of victory, and in this 
serene peace which has succeeded the commotions 
and the thunders of war and battle, how glorious and 
magnificent is the prospect that opens for our be- 
loved country. 

O land of Washington and of Lincoln ! land con- 
secrated by patriots* prayers, and tears, and strug- 



116 THE TRIAL OF REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS. 

gles, and baptized in patriots' blood ! may thy noble 
institutions of civil liberty endure as long as thy 
hills and rock-ribbed mountains shall stand ; may 
thy broad and ocean-washed territory, the valleys 
of thy great rivers, the fertile plains and fields of 
the North and the South, and the waving prairies of 
the great West, be the home of uncounted millions 
of freemen, the chosen abode of Liberty, Justice, and 
Law ; and may thy radiant banner of stars forever 
float in the vanguard of the world's progress and 
the world's civilization ! 



THE CAUCUS system: its abuses and 

THEIR REMEDY.^ 



It may be safely assumed that political parties are 
inevitable and indispensable in a free government. 
They are necessary auxiliaries to the working of a 
political system like ours. They have prevailed in 
all governments just in proportion to the diffusion of 
political power among the people. It is only in des- 
potisms, where the will of one man has been law to 
the State, that their growth has been stifled and 
checked. 

It is easy to see how the existence of parties 
is inevitable and indispensable in a republic. 
Wherever there is freedom, there will be difference 
of opinion. All men can not think alike. Indeed, it 
is neither to be expected nor desired that there should 
be unanimity in political action. While it is the 
theory of our national and State constitutions to treat 
the people as a unit, and while the gathered will of 
the people is impressed upon our public statutes and 
policies by means of majorities, still it is to be ex- 
pected, in the very nature of things, that this result 
shall be attained by intelligent thought and discus- 
sion, and that wherever there are majorities, there 
will be minorities also. 

This is the natural working of republican institu- 

' Article in Detroit I'ribune Dec. 4, 1868. After thorough exami- 
nation in the National Library and elsewhere this has been found to be 
the first announcement of the principle of legal control of the Caucus 
System. 

117 



118 THE CAUCUS SYSTEM: 

tions. Parties are subdivisions of the whole people. 
The party in power represents the majority view ; 
the party out of power the minority, or opposition, 
view. If we could conceive of a party in power with 
no opposition, it could safely be predicted that its 
administration would soon grow corrupt and danger- 
ous to the State. Parties, therefore, are a natural 
and necessary outgrowth of republican institutions. 
But political parties must have organization. They 
can not make their ideas and principles effective 
without it. Mere floating public sentiment accom- 
plishes nothing. It must be reduced to order and 
method, and the many agreeing minds be made to 
act in concert. This order and unity of action is 
what produces majorities at the polls — the control- 
ling power in our politics. There must be agreement 
as to the principles of the party, and also as to the 
candidate who shall represent them. Principles and 
policies are only made effective through elected pub- 
lic officers ; hence the candidates of a party are its 
representatives, and their selection its main object 
and duty. 

The cajicus is indigenous to our political soil, its 
natural fruit and outgrowth. Even before our birth 
as a nation, we hear of it in the selection of local 
colonial officers, and in the popular agitations which 
preceded the Revolution. And from its earliest men- 
tion in the garret of Thomas Daws, in Boston, in the 
year 1770, down to the last nominating conventions 
of either party, the caucus has been in constant and 
prevailing use. 

It was at first secret. But the advantages of or- 
ganization and concert of action which it afforded 



ITS ABUSES AND THEIR REMEDY. 119 

were so obvious, and the necessity for these in order 
to party success was so apparent, that it soon became 
an open and widespread political agency. Its growth 
was not only natural, but its object was fair and its 
theory a good one. It was born out of the very 
necessity of things. How could the members of a 
party, scattered over a wide extent of territory, 
secure that concert of action essential to success, and 
agree upon the candidates who should represent them 
without these primary meetings where their will and 
sense could be taken ? 

Regarding the party as a part of the people agree- 
ing on certain measures, and united for common 
objects, the caucus simply borrowed the principle 
which our system of government has furnished, and 
collected the will of the party as that provides for 
gathering the will of the whole people. 

But while the original purpose of the caucus was 
a purely legitimate and fair one and its plan simple 
and unobjectionable, and while to-day its theory is the 
same as ever, it has happened that its practical work- 
ings have, of late years, been frequently unjust and 
mischievous, and that it has fallen into great and con- 
stantly increasing abuses. 

These abuses have come from various causes, but 
principally, first, because the caucus is a purely vol- 
untary agency, and the great body of every party has 
been mainly interested in the principles which the 
party has advocated and comparatively indifferent as 
to the candidates to be nominated ; and, second, 
because having had no legal sanction or restraints, it 
has fallen into the hands of selfish and designing men, 
who, taking advantage of this indifference as to can- 



120 THE CAUCUS SYSTEM : 

didates, have, while loudly advocating principles, 
used it in the interest of factions and cliques. And 
the absence of all legal penalties and restraints has 
frequently resulted in downright fraud and outrage 
where the party could not be cheated by ordinary 
craft and cunning. 

The stronger a party, the more apt to be these 
abuses. For where a party has an assured ascend- 
ancy, selfish and designing politicians have only to 
carry the caucuses in order to secure the offices. 
Good men who may feel disposed to resent the out- 
rage attending the nomination are either intimidated 
into silence by the force of party drill, or coerced by 
their fears of the success of dangerous principles 
advocated by the opposite party. 

Thus it happens that fraud and outrage in the cau- 
cus are most frequently resorted to in the very cases 
where, through this party supremacy, the whole peo- 
ple are made to suffer by them. And thus, too, it is 
not unfrequently the case that the well-known and 
admitted general wish of the party for the nomina- 
tion of some favorite leader is defeated by the dex- 
terity or the fraud of a few men who may be opposed 
to him. And the more worthy he is the more apt 
is he to be sacrificed, for while his ability may make 
him the object of envy to narrow and selfish minds, 
his honor and integrity will prevent his resorting to 
the unjustifiable means which they will use against 
him, and he will therefore fall an easier victim. 

It is not so difficult to see these abuses as it is to 
point out their remedy. The reform needed is not to 
uproot the caucus system, but to make it answer its 
true end by giving to it the sanction of the law ; by 



ITS AHUSES AND THEIR REMEDY. llJl 

such legal provisions as shall secure to the party fair- 
ness of representation and protect it, as well as the 
public, from imposition and fraud. 

One of the chief difficulties of the case lies back of 
the field which maybe occupied by legislation, in the 
moral apathy of the people. This, of course, can not 
be corrected by any legal enactment. The law can 
not compel men to attend the caucus. The most it 
can do is to secure fairness in the methods of party 
action and nominations. 

4t must be manifest to every observer of the work- 
ing, and especially the recent working, of our political 
machinery, that there are great and pressing public 
reasons why the law should interfere to protect the 
caucus from these growing abuses. The caucus is 
now not only a fixed fact and institution in our poli- 
tics, but it is also one of vast and incalculable impor- 
tance. It is the fountain of all political influence ; it 
is the arbiter of all political ambition. It underlies 
all and runs through all our political system. It 
makes all our public officers from the lowest to the 
highest — from constable to president. It dictates 
all our public measures and policies from the resolu- 
tions of a single township to the platform of a national 
convention. Its edicts are law to parties and public 
men, and party success makes them law to the whole 
country. 

Yet vast as is this power of the caucus, universal 
and omnipotent as is this agency in our politics, 
there is no legal recognition of it in our constitution 
and statutes. We would search in vain, even, for 
any such recognition of the existence of political 
parties. 



122 THE CAUCUS SYSTEM : 

All this should be changed. Our public law should 
take notice of the existence of political parties, and 
make provision for the selection of candidates as well 
as for the election of public officers. 

How can this be done ? The most direct way, and 
the way most consistent with the necessities and 
analogies of the subject, is to treat political parties 
after the manner of corporations. Recognize the 
party as a political subdivision, or quasi corporation, 
and make provision for the manner of selecting its 
candidates as the law now provides for the number 
and manner of selection of State, county, town, and 
city officers. 

There is nothing incongruous or inconsistent in 
this proposition. It is just as competent for the law 
to divide the people by party as by geographical 
lines ; by lines of sentiment and opinion as by lines 
of the compass. It is the people of a county or a 
city that are organized into a body corporate, and 
not the empty roods and acres embraced in their 
geographical boundaries. 

If this view be a correct one, and true in principle 
as applied to the subject, it is not necessary to go 
into details. These will take care of themselves. 
But an outline of the working of this plan may be 
given in this wise. 

The subject is one that falls properly under the 
control of the States, to be regulated by State law. 
Let the State, by proper constitutional provisions 
and statutory enactments, provide for all primary 
meetings of any party : — 

1. That the proper committee shall give due notice 



ITS ABSUES AND THEIR REMEDY. 123 

of the time and place of the caucus and of the busi- 
ness to be transacted. 

'2. That ballot boxes be furnished and a registry- 
kept. 

3. That in case of challenge the voter shall make 
oath that he voted the ticket of the party at the last 
election, and that perjury may be predicated on this 
oath. 

4. That the persons having a majority of the votes 
at the caucus shall be declared duly elected as dele- 
gates of the party to discharge the proper duty in 
each given case. 

.*). That the committee act as judges and inspectors 
of the voting, and make certified returns to the proper 
convention of the party. 

Of course, only the leading features of the plan are 
here indicated. Provision could be made for minor 
details, as well as for the first organization of parties. 
Delegated conventions could also have legal sanction 
and protection, although there would be little need 
of this if the caucus is protected. 

How can this plan be put into practical operation 
and made effective .•* 

I answer by exacting a compliance with these pro- 
visions as a new or added qualification for office. In 
addition to the qualification of age, residence, etc., 
of the officer, provide, "and that he shall have been 
duly presented or nominated for the office by dele- 
gates of his party chosen in accordance with the 
ret[uirements of law." 

Here, too, we find no legal impediment. The 
questions of suffrage and eligibility to office are en- 



124 THE CAUCUS SYSTEM 

tirely within the control of the different States, to 
be governed only by considerations of sound public 
policy. It is no more arbitrary to put into the consti- 
tution of a State a provision making a citizen ineli- 
gible to the office of governor unless he has been 
presented as a candidate for the office in a certain 
manner by his fellow citizens than it is to provide 
that he shall be ineligible to the office unless he has 
attained the age of thirty years. There is no dis- 
tinction in principle between the two cases. Public 
policy may as well control the nomination as fix the 
age of the candidate. 

Indeed, we find a most significant and weighty 
authority for this principle in that clause of the Con- 
stitution of the United States which provides for the 
selection of a president by the house of representa- 
tives from the three highest candidates in the elec- 
toral college. Here is, in effect, an added qualifica- 
tion for the office of president. The candidate must 
not only be a native-born citizen, and have attained 
the age of thirty-five years, but he must also be one 
of the three persons receiving the highest number of 
votes in the electoral college. No matter if he have 
the qualification of citizenship and of age ; no matter 
even if he have received a majority of the popular 
vote — all this would make no difference. He would 
still be ineligible, and all votes given for him would 
be void. It is the manner of presentation for the 
office which is here controlled by the Constitution, 
and this is the exact principle proposed in the fore- 
going plan. 

Nor does this plan contemplate any undue inter- 
ference with the right of suffrage. Its principle in 



ITS ABUSES AND THEIR REMEDY. 125 

this respect will be found somewhat analogous to 
and no more arbitrary and oppressive than that con- 
tained in the registry laws prevailing in many of the 
States, the constitutionality of which has never been 
questioned. By these registry laws the citizen who 
has not registered his name within the specified time, 
and in the proper office, is disfranchised. So in the 
plan proposed he would lose his vote if he cast it for 
a candidate who had not come regularly and lawfully 
before the people for their suffrages. If a majority 
of the electors of a State should refuse or neglect to 
register, the minority of registered voters, however 
small, would control the elections. So, also, — and 
perhaps this is a more strictly analogous illustration 
— if the majority of the electors of a State should 
choose to vote for a citizen under the constitutional 
age for governor, their votes wou'ld be void, and the 
candidate who was eligible, however small his vote, 
would be declared elected. 

But it is needless to multiply illustrations. The 
principle would seem too plain for question. It is 
only its proposed application to a new field and a 
jurisdiction never assumed by the law that gives it 
an unfamiliar look, and makes a word of defense 
proper. 

In conclusion, it is believed that the plan for the 
legal organization and control of the caucus system 
thus briefly set forth in this essay will be found, on 
examination, to be without difficulty in law and in 
accordance with the plainest principles of moral 
equity. It would be the natural complement to the 
working of our political machinery ; the reaching 
down to the foundations of our political edifice. 



126 THE CAUCUS SYSTEM. 

Some reform is -imperatively demanded. The cau- 
cus is an institution of our politics too vital and too 
full of moment to our national prosperity and life 
to be left longer without any legal safeguards or 
restraints, a subject of accident and a prey to fraud. 

This vast field of political influence lying back of 
the law, but controlling the law, must be occupied. 
This acknowledged source and fountainhead of all 
political power must be cleansed and guarded, so 
that henceforth all its streams may be pure and 
invigorating. 

If the great party which carried the country safely 
and triumphantly through the terrible crisis of the 
Civil war, and which is now successfully grappling 
with the difficult and momentous questions of recon- 
struction, shall lead the way in this reform, it will 
add another to its many titles to the gratitude of 
posterity and the enduring plaudits of history. 



speech to republican state 
convention; 



On taking the chair, Mr. May said : — 
I return you my profoundest thanks for the high 
honor you have done me in selecting me to pre- 
side over your deliberations. We are assembled as 
the representatives of the Republican party of Michi- 
gan, charged with the delicate and responsible duty 
of selecting Republican standard-bearers for 1866. 

The campaign which we this day open is one of 
the gravest and most momentous in all our political 
history. Through the treachery of a president who 
owes his position to Republican yotes, — a treachery 
almost unexampled in the history of public men, — it 
is now proposed to reconstruct the Union in the 
interest of those who for four years sought to destroy 
it. It was the great Republican, loyal organization 
which we represent to-day that carried the country 
safely through the late tremendous contest. [Ap- 
plause.] That organization never had a disloyal 
man in its ranks. [Applause.] Can any other party 
say as much .'' Can the country now safely leave 
this great question of reconstruction — the recon- 
struction of the Union in the interest of justice and 
liberty — in the hands of the men who during the 
war had sympathy only for slavery and rebellion .'' 
The country looks to-day to the same great loyal 
organization for future safety and peace. We want 

' As reported in the Detroit daily papers. 



128 SPEECH TO REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION. 

peace; we want peace and order and law — the 
same to-day as we wanted them during the perilous 
hours of the late great contest, when we so eagerly- 
poured out our blood and treasure to secure them. 
Can the country safely leave this great question in 
the hands of those men who practically and efficiently 
aided in the disruption of the Union by their votes 
given "on the side of the Rebellion, or those who more 
openly took up arms against the government ? No ; 
we can not trust the country in such hands. We 
want peace and safety and order, and we must have 
them through justice. We must reconstruct the pil- 
lars and columns of this great Union, upon the endur- 
ing foundations of eternal justice, so that this nation 
shall stand for ages, the delight and admiration of 
the world. We can not safely restore to the coun- 
cils of the nation the same men who in 1<S61 went 
out with scowls and threats of defiance against 
their government, and who, since that hour, until the 
time of their surrender on the field of battle, have 
been our open enemies, arrayed against us in deadly 
combat. We must stand by the loyal men of the 
country, and reconstruct the Union after this manner. 
Gentlemen of the convention, it is not for me to 
instruct you in your duties. They are arduous, deli- 
cate, and important. Permit me, however, to throw 
out the hope here that in the distribution of your hon- 
ors you will not forget those men who did not forget 
their country in the hour of its peril, but bravely gave 
themselves to its defense. [Applause.] Invoking the 
spirit of harmony upon your deliberations, and again 
thanking you for this honor, I assume the duties of 
the chair. 



SPEECH AT THE UNVEILING OF THE 

MEMORIAL TABLET IN KALAMAZOO 

COLLEGE, JUNE 14, 1870. 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

At this late hour, and after the protracted exercises 
of the day, I shall trespass upon your attention but 
to say a word, and I hesitate even to do that. 

The lesson of this occasion, as it seems to me, is 
patriotic self-consecration. On that memorable April 
morning, when the news reached us that Sumter had 
fallen, our citizens, as they turned their eyes toward 
College Hill, saw the stars and stripes floating from 
the tower, run up by student hands. There, within 
those walls, were these young men. pursuing quiet 
studies to prepare them for the peaceful pursuits of 
life. But they had read and pondered the great ex- 
amples of history. They had read in the Roman 
story of Horatius Codes, and how he stood guard at 
the bridge on the Tiber ; in the Grecian, of Leonidas 
and his immortal three hundred ; in the English, of 
John Hampden and the ship money ; and in our own 
history, of Washington and his illustrious compa- 
triots, who won our freedom, and laid the foundations 
of our nationality. 

And inspired with these great examples, and with 
that motto, " God and Country," they went forth to 
battle and to death. 

I remember them well- There was Eldred, tall 

and manly and promising ; Burge, gentle as a girl, 

but in the hour of danger firm as a rock ; the two 

Carters, well beloved and tearfully remembered here 

9 129 



180 SPEECH AT UNVEILING OF MEMORIAL TABLET. 

to-day ; and Porter and Woodward — I can not stop 
to name them all. 

Fortunate young men ! They have fought the 
good fight, and won the crown of immortality. If 
their young hearts were stirred by aught of youthful 
ambition, as no doubt they were, they have realized 
the noblest honors and the grandest success. How 
long shall we be remembered .-* How long shall these 
honored names with us to-day withstand the ravages 
of time } — Not long. But these young men have 
written their names in that enduring marble ; for a 
few brief years of common life, they have inscribed 
their names on the immortal roll of the defenders of 
country and the martyrs of liberty. 

And to the young men who shall in the future 
crowd these college halls, they have become bright 
and inspiring examples. Yea, they have become, and 
must ever be. the noblest and highest teachers and 
instructors in this institution of learning. 

Mr. President, you have an able and learned faculty 
here, and I trust you may ever have, but you can 
not impart such instruction as these names shall for- 
ever utter with their marble lips, for they teach the 
sublime lessons of patriotism and duty, of self- 
sacrifice for country and liberty. 

It is written there on the tablet : " They died that 
the nation might live." Thank God, through such 
sacrifice as theirs the nation does live, with all its 
great institutions of liberty, justice, and civilization, 
and in all its magnificent possibilities for the future, 
so impressively described by our distinguished friend 
here, to-day. Hold, then, their names among the 
priceless treasures of this college. God blesS their 
memory ! God save the Republic. 



















■ l ll i M IIH TT--in 



'•'■Mil 



MR. MAY'S OLD HOME AT KALAMAZOO— WINTER SCENE. 



LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINDICATED.^ 



Fellow Citizens : Following my own earnest 
desire, I have availed myself of the permission of my 
physicians to appear before you, my neighbors and 
fellow townsmen, to discuss the political issues of 
the hour. Recognizing here, as it is fit that 1 should, 
that kind Providence which has raised me up from a 
long and dangerous illness, I feel that I can not bet- 
ter use my first returning strength than in speaking 
my solemn convictions of public duty in this crisis 
in our national affairs. And I have been the more 
anxious to do this, because of my recent separation 
from old political associates and from a political 
organization which for these many years has com- 
manded my best and most earnest efforts in its 
behalf. 

THE citizen's DUTY AND RESPONSIIULirV. 

In a government like ours, where political power 
is lodged in the hands of the whole people, every 
man owes to the state his voice and counsel as well 
as his vote. Citizenship is not merely a privilege, 
it is a responsibility as well. Where all govern, all 
should feel the responsibility of governing. The 
great need of our government to-day, and for the 
years to come, is intelligent, conscientious, political 
action on the part of its citizens. In this is our only 
ground of confidence. If the elective franchise shall 
be regarded as an unimportant privilege, to be used 
as whim or caprice or prejudice shall dictate, or as a 

' Speech delivered at Union Hall, Kalama/oo, Sept. 27, 1872. 



132 LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINDICATED. 

thing to be sold in the political market to the highest 
bidder, then farewell to popular government. Our 
ship will go down, as many another noble one has 
in the past, beneath the waves of public degeneracy 
and corruption. 

PARTY ALLEGIANCE AND DESPOTISM. 

The great controlling question with every voter 
at such a time as this should be, how shall my vote 
be cast so as to promote the best interests of my 
country ? But right here comes in the tyranny of 
party. How many men stifle honest convictions and 
give to party what belongs to country. And party 
intolerance and despotism were never exhibited in 
this country to such an extent as in this very year 
and in this presidential election. In order to hold 
the old Republican organization together and prevent 
the great secession from its ranks, the party whip 
has been unsparingly applied. Men of unquestioned 
honesty and eminent public service have been de- 
nounced by party organs and speakers in the most 
bitter and unmeasured terms for a simple difference 
of opinion and consequent separation in political 
action. Unworthy and despicable motives are as- 
cribed to them, and the epithets, "traitor," "rene- 
gade," •' ingrate," and " sorehead," are hurled at them 
with an apparent venom and vindictiveness painful 
to witness. Fellow citizens, nothing could be more 
monstrous and unreasonable than this. For what 
is a political party but a voluntary association of 
men who think alike on public affairs ? It is simply 
a means to make effective in the administration of the 
government the political opinions of the majority of 



LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINDICATED. 138 

the people. That is the only legitimate end of party. 
What claim, then, has party on me when my opinions 
differ from it ? Shall it coerce me .-' Shall it compel 
an agreement of opinion .'' Am I a " traitor" because 
I can not see it to be my duty this year to vote for 
General Grant and the old Republican ticket ? When 
did I take any oath of perpetual allegiance to the 
Republican party, much less one of loyalty to U. S. 
Grant ? 

No, nothing could be more clear and simple than 
the true understanding of this matter of party alle- 
giance, and nothing could possibly be more unreason- 
able and insane than the course which is being 
pursued by the organs of the administration. 

Why, if there were no other reason for revolt, this 
party despotism would furnish one. Is an American 
citizen to be intimidated and bullied in the discharge 
of his citizen duty by attacks upon his motives and 
character, and by an exhibition of political racks, 
and thumb-screws, and whipping-posts, and other 
implements of moral torture .'' 

Every manly, patriotic instinct rises up in rebellion 
against such intolerance and despotism. I tell you, 
my fellow citizens, that the question where my vote 
shall be cast is one simply between my conscience 
and my God, and a matter in which I am not answer- 
able or responsible to this newspaper or that poli- 
tician or to any man or power on earth. Is it 
"treachery" to follow conscience and opinion into 
new political associations ? Let me ask some of 
these editors, How came the Republican party itself 
into being ? Were its members all born Republicans .'' 
Please tell me, if you can, how, if it was noble and 



134 LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINDICATED. 

patriotic for men to leave the Whig and Democratic 
parties in 1854, for opinion's sake, it becomes despic- 
able and " treacherous " for men to leave the Repub- 
lican party, for like reason, in 1872 ? 

But I waste my time on a clear proposition. I 
only allude to this matter of party despotism because 
it is made use of so largely in this campaign. It, 
together with the question of party and personal 
consistency, seems to be the chief weapon of the 
administration partizans and advocates. On this 
last point of " consistency " only a word need be said. 
It is asked of men standing where I and many others 
do, Why did you stay and act in the party down to a 
time subsequent to the nomination of General Grant .'' 
I do not care to enter upon any personal vindication, 
but I can answer that question very easily. We 
remained in the party so long, for the sufficient 
reason that the issues of the campaign had not been 
made up, and we could not tell where our duty 
would lie. Not until the Baltimore convention had 
adopted the Cincinnati platform and candidates was 
it certain what the issues would be, and that the 
contest would be between liberal and illiberal Repub- 
licanism. Before that time it was not certain that 
we should not be compelled to vote for the Phila- 
delphia platform, even with the burden of General 
Grant upon it, as a choice of evils. This was a prac- 
tical question, and the plain course of wisdom and 
duty was to wait and see what the platforms and 
who the candidates would be. I think that is a full 
answer to the question of consistency which in this 
locality, at least, has been so persistently urged. 

It would be more to the purpose if these partizan 



LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINDICATED. 135 

critics would point out a single Republican principle 
which we abandon in voting for Horace Greeley, 
who, I believe, is an older Republican than General 
Grant. A man has a right, I suppose, in this country, 
to change his mind on public questions ; but we have 
not even done that. Not a single plank in the old 
Republican platform have we turned our backs upon. 
For myself I can say that whenever these principles 
have been at stake, I have never hesitated, whatever 
may have been my personal disappointments, to 
advocate them before the people with all my zeal 
and strength, as I would do again were they now in 
issue or peril. Daniel Webster said, in his greatest 
speech in the Senate, " The past, at least, is secure." 
So we say of the great measures of the Republican 
party, now wrought into the Constitution and the 
history of the country. We rejoke in them all, and 
are exceedingly glad that they are never to be dis- 
turbed. This certainly ought to prove that we are 
still Republicans. But we are not " Grant men ; " 
that is the trouble ; that is the head and front of our 
"treason" and "treachery." Well, when Grant is 
king, or emperor, we will take our chances for the 
halter, but I beg leave to remind his voluntary sub- 
jects and vassals that he is not king yet, and that 
this is still a land of liberty. 

CHARACTER AND IMPORTANCE OF THE PRESENT 
CANVASS. 

After these preliminary considerations I now come 
closer to the great issues involved in the present 
canvass. It is common to say at every presidential 
election, that it is more important and vital than any 



136 LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINDICATED. 

of its predecessors. I can not quite say that of this 
election, for we have had in the recent past some 
elections of transcendant importance, but there is a 
significance and an interest in this political campaign, 
peculiar to itself. A new era has been reached in 
our politics. The old issues have" passed away. 
They belong to the past. The present issue between 
the parties is not so much on questions of principle 
as of administration. The real importance of this 
election consists in the fact that it is a struggle of the 
people for honest government and competent admin- 
istration, against presidential incompetency and pre- 
tension, against party despotism and against corrupt 
cabals and rings in State and nation. And back of 
these questions is the still greater one of final peace 
and reconciliation between the North and the South. 

GENERAL GRANT'S FIRST NOMINATION — WHY HE 
WAS NOMINATED. 

As General Grant is not only at the head of the 
present administration by virtue of his official posi- 
tion, but as he has become the great stumbling-block 
and divider of the Republican party, he necessarily 
constitutes a principal subject of discussion, and I 
propose to look for a little while at his connection 
with the Republican party, and his administration of 
the government. At his first nomination in 1868, 
he was not known to be a Republican at all, but was 
urged by the advocates of availability in the party, 
on the ground of his military fame, and because the 
Democrats would take him up if we did not. The 
force of this last argument was difficult to see, but, 
for one, I thought they were both bad enough at the 



LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINDICATED. 137 

time ; and I am proud and happy to-night, to be able 
to say that I never was a "Grant man,"' and never 
favored his nomination, first or last, or at any time. 

MILITARY PRESIDENTS. 

It was evident that General Grant had no civil 
qualifications for the presidency, as his whole training 
had been military, and as he had never even take 
interest enough in public affairs to vote but once in 
his life, and then having made the amazing mistake 
of voting for James Buchanan. The presidency is 
the highest civil trust in the country, and it has 
always been great enough to require for its proper 
discharge the highest civil ability and experience ; 
and the largest and most comprehensive statesman- 
ship could always find room enough in it. It should 
be filled by a statesman, by a man of large knowledge 
of public affairs. The nation should be as wise at 
least in the selection of a man for such a trust as the 
prfvate citizen is in selecting his business clerks and 
assistants. What would be thought of A. T. Stewart 
if he should employ for his head salesman a man 
from a tannery or a brick-yard, who had never been 
in a dry-goods store but once in his life. 

But the passion for military presidents was no new 
thing. They had several times been tried before in 
the history of the country, but not always with the 
best results. After Washington, whose character 
was too broad to be confined to a mere military des- 
ignation, we had Jackson and Harrison, and then 
Zachary Taylor, last before Grant. Of these, Jackson 
had been a judge and a senator, and Harrison had 
also been in the Senate and in other civil trusts, both 



]38 LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINDICATED. 

having earned their military reputation many years 
before in the volunteer service. Taylor, like Grant, 
was purely military. Like Grant, also, he knew 
little else, and had never taken any interest in public 
affairs. 

grant's first MISTAKES AND BLUNDERS. 

But unlike Grant, Taylor had the good sense to 
realize his own defects, and to call around him able 
advisers. His cabinet was composed of the ablest 
statesmen in the Whig party, and commanded the 
respect and confidence of the country. General 
Grant, after his election, took no counsel of anybody, 
and finally broke his sphinx-like silence by the an- 
nouncement of a cabinet that amazed his friends and 
the country. Not to speak of his naming two promi- 
nent present-makers, who had no political position 
whatever, one of whom being utterly unheard of 
before, for prominent positions, his cabinet, with per- 
haps the exception of two men, whom he soon got 
rid of, was politically contemptible. He made A. T. 
Stewart, the great New York merchant and importer, 
secretary of the treasury, in the face of a plain stat- 
ute nearly as old as the government, and even had 
the military hardihood to ask the Senate to remove 
the obstruction. I recall in this a piece of history that 
you all remember. General Grant, in the selection 
of such a cabinet, and in the exhibition of such igno- 
rance, showed himself at the very outset, in the lan- 
guage of Mr. Stanton, "Unfit to govern this country." 

grant's CONFIDENTIAL ADVISERS. 

Well, he did not try to govern the country long. 
I believe he made an honest effort to govern without 



LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINDICATED. 139 

the aid of the politicians, but he did not know how, 
and very soon was compelled to call on thenn for 
help. Apparently disgusted and disheartened by 
his own failure, he gave the country into the hands 
of a regency of senators, whom he selected as his 
confidential advisers, and then relapsed into silence 
and indifference. The sober fact is. General Grant 
has never been president of the United States but 
about a month. He has had a very good time ever 
since, but he has not been president save in name. 

The regency of senators, into whose hands he put 
himself, has governed the countrysince. You do not 
need to be told who they are. The country knows 
them well. And right here I mark a most vital and 
damaging point against General Grant. With the 
whole array of Republican statesmen to select his 
advisers from, he turned away "from such men as 
Sumner, and Trumbull, and Colfax, and took to his 
confidence such men as Morton, and Cameron, and 
Chandler ! There is a judge of men for you ! 
General Grant is reputed to be a most excellent 
judge of horses, but if he should make such a mistake 
on horses as this, he would at once be looked upon 
with utter contempt by his bosom friends of the turf 

But seriously, fellow citizens, this is a most weighty 
charge against a president of the United States, that 
he should select the three unquestionably most 
notorious, unscrupulous, and disreputable public 
characters in his party for his confidential counsel- 
ors, and advisers. And as he still gives these men 
his confidence, it becomes a most important question 
whether the American people shall continue him and 
them in office for another term. A president of the 



140 LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINDICATED. 

United States is supposed to communicate, from time 
to time, in messages, his views and advice to Con- 
gress. "Morton put that in," says our president to 
General Farnsworth. Fellow citizens, we want a 
president who won't let Morton put anything in. 
Imagine Horace Greeley president, and some inter- 
meddler trying to " put " something " in " to one of his 
messages ! The "villain " would stand a pretty good 
chance to be "put out" by the old man before he got 
anything "in" a great ways. 

OTHER MISTAKES AND DERELICTIONS. 

I can not, with all the other things I wish to say, 
review in detail all the reasons which have been 
urged, showing the unfitness of General Grant for 
the presidency. I pass, therefore, without discussion, 
the charges of "nepotism" and "gift-taking," so 
damaging in their character, simply remarking that 
these charges have been proved to the satisfaction 
of everybody who has the capacity to understand 
and the honesty to concede the weight of testimony. 
Empty denials will hardly do against palpable and 
stubborn facts. The Grants, the Dents, the Caseys, 
and the Cramers are known to be in public office, 
and the subscription books and public records will 
show when the " gifts" were taken. 

But beyond all these things which demonstrate 
the personal unfitness of General Grant, the great 
fact stands out that by his mistaken and reckless 
San Domingo scheme, by his vindictive course 
toward leading Republican statesmen, and by his 
appointment and retention in office of men proved to 
be incompetent and dishonest, he had divided his 



LIBERAL REPUHLICANISM VINDICATED. 141 

party a year and a half ago, and thus shown himself 
again "unfit to govern." Heretofore, when the head 
of an administration has made such a blunder in 
statesmanship as to divide his party, he has been 
thought unworthy of re-election. 

GENERAL GRANT DEMANDS A RENOMINATION. 

Rut the nominal head of this administration and 
his regency of senators determine to alter history in 
this respect, and the sixty thousand office-holders 
are not loth to assist in the effort. And then a great 
army of toadies and "legitimists," who go for the 
"powers that be," were easily induced to take up the 
cry of "Grant for a second term." True, everybody 
said at the beginning of 1871, that it would be mad- 
ness to talk of renominating him, because he had 
divided the party and could not secure its full sup- 
port ; but what cared these men for that. They 
knew they had sure places under Grant, they could 
not tell how it might be under somebody else. And 
so General Grant's renomination was seen to be in- 
evitable, against justice and sound party policy as it 
was, and against the best judgment and sense of the 
party, as I believe, could they have found expression. 
THE CINCINNATI CONVENTION. 

And then followed just what had been predicted 
and known. Those Republicans in Congress and 
the country who felt that they could not conscien- 
tiously support Grant and his personal government 
against the best interests of the nation, were com- 
pelled to join in the movement which found expres- 
sion in the platform and nominations at Cincinnati. 
This was on the first of May, a month before the 



142 LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINDICATED. 

Philadelphia convention, and it was perfectly well 
understood by everybody, that should the conven- 
tion of the fifth of June nominate a candidate, other 
than General Grant, the Cincinnati movement would 
entirely lose its significance. 

But nothing could stop these persistent and inter- 
ested gentlemen who clamored for the renomination 
of General Grant. Grant they must and would have, 
and Grant they have got. They were willing to 
give for him all the best and ablest Republican states- 
men in the country, the leading and most influential 
Republican journals, and tens of thousands of the 
best Republicans in nearly every State. All this 
may have been very sensible and judicious, and good 
political management, but I am unable to see it so. 
If now they can elect General Grant, very well ; if 
they should happen to fail of doing that, I think they 
will be apt, on reflection, to find out the reason for it. 

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY RESOLVES TO SUSTAIN THE 
CINCINNATI PLATFORM AND CANDIDATES. 

The Democratic party, though naturally somewhat 
disappointed at the nomination of Mr. Greeley, soon 
resolved to support him, and at a full and earnest 
convention at Baltimore, on the tenth of July, 
formally adopted, with great unanimity and enthu- 
siasm, the platform and candidates of the Cincinnati 
convention. 

The great issues of the campaign were thus made 
up and presented to the American people. In look- 
ing at them, they naturally divide under two different 
heads, principles and vicn, on platforms and candi- 



LIBERAL REPUBLICANLSM VINDICATED. 143 

dates. I shall discuss them in this order, and I shall 
first say a word upon the two platforms. 

THE PLATFORMS. 

Only a little need be said on this head, as for a 
wonder in American politics, we have this year a 
substantial agreement between the two platforms on 
the leading questions before the country. I say sub- 
stantial agreement, but I do not forget that there is 
a difference between them in some quite material 
respects. But it is unnecessary for my purpose that 
I should take any time in pointing out and comment- 
ing upon this difference. My object is gained when 
I show that the Cincinnati platform is a Republicaii 
platform, made by Republicans, though Democrats, 
for the good of the country, have resolved to support 
it, and that there is really no complaint made by 
Grant men against it. This I un'derstand to be the 
fact. 

I might go farther, were it necessary, and show 
the decided superiority of the Cincinnati platform in 
clearness, directness, and true statesmanship. As a 
State paper I regard it as much superior to the Phila- 
delphia platform, which is a piece of party special 
pleading, and which has a very plentiful sprinkling of 
demagoguery in it. But as there is no real issue 
made on the platforms, I repeat that I do not care to 
go beyond the conceded fact that the Cincinnati 
platform is a good one in itself, and that it is Repub- 
lican and made by Republican hands. 



144 LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINDICATED. 

THE CANDIDATES. 

I come now to the Liberal candidates. And here 
again as I wish to speak as a Republican to Republi- 
cans, I point you to the unquestioned fact that both 
are Republicans, of the earliest and best in the coun- 
try. Horace Greeley has frequently been called, with 
homely appropriateness, the father of the Republican 
party. Certainly, no man is an older, more pro- 
nounced, or more influential Republican than he. 
Gratz Brown, as is not so universally known, was 
also one of the earliest Republicans and antislavery 
men in his own State, and his was a slave State, 
where it cost a man something to be a Republican. 

Here, then, are two eminently representative Re- 
publicans, standing on a Republican platform. So far 
no question. But I am met right here by my old Re- 
publican friends, and told that these candidates have 
apostatized from the faith, and that they and their 
present supporters will betray their professed prin- 
ciples as soon as they obtain power. I propose to 
meet this point fairly and fully, as it is made a vital 
and leading one in the canvass. 

CAN REPUBLICANS SAFELY AND CONSIStENTLY SUP- 
PORT GREELEY AND BROWN ? 

Can Republicans consistently and safely support 
the Cincinnati candidates and platform .'' This ques- 
tion will involve a number of considerations, and will 
very properly demand an answer to the various 
objections which are urged to the support of Greeley 
and Brown by the adherents and partizans of General 
Grant. 



LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINDICATED. 145 

Of course it is assumed in the outset that in case 
of success the candidates will prove untrue to the 
platform on which they have been elected, because 
we have seen that the platform itself is a good one. 
Now this necessarily involves still another assump- 
tion that these candidates are corrupt and dishonest 
men who would not hesitate to betray their country. 
Assumptions so monstrous as these I might be ex- 
cused in passing in silence, but monstrous as they are, 
they are persistently put forward, and therefore I 
meet them. We have to take the issue as our oppo- 
nents make it. 

CAN THE CANDIDATES BE TRUSTED ? 

I ask first, Is there any ground, either in the char- 
acter, utterances or present position of Mr. Greeley or 
his associate on the ticket, to justify the assumption 
of treachery .'' In the first place, all the world knows 
that Horace Greeley is a man of high personal char- 
acter and honor. More than any private citizen in 
this land he has lived for the past thirty years in the 
very face and observation of his countrymen and all 
the world, and yet the man does not live who can suc- 
cessfully question his personal or his public integrity. 
That is enough to say on this point as to him. And 
he has passed his word, pledging faithful adherence 
to every line and principle of the Cincinnati platform. 
More than this, I call the attention of my Republican 
friends to the fact that in his letters of acceptance 
and in his recent speeches he has manfully and 
bravely rejoiced in the consummation of the great work 
of human freedom to which his life for so many years 
has been devoted, and has pledged himself in case of 



146 LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINDICATED. 

his election to maintain it all. In a word, after all 
the insane clamor and denunciation which we hear 
about his ''treason" and "treachery,*' the fact 
remains that Mr. Greeley has not changed or aban- 
doned a single one of his Republican principles, and 
I confidently challenge any man to show to the con- 
trary. Substitute Philadelphia for Cincinnati, and 
suppose Mr. Greeley had received the regular nomi- 
nation there, on precisely the same platform, would 
these party gentlemen have found any difficulty 
then.'* — Not at all. All would have been satisfied. 
The candidate would have commanded the enthusi- 
astic support of his party, and Zach. Chandler would 
have been one of his eulogists. Are men to lose 
their senses and grow crazy with prejudice be- 
cause a man is nominated at Cincinnati instead of 
Philadelphia ? 

As to Governor Brown, the candidate for vice- 
president, I have yet to hear any charge from any- 
body that he is not to be trusted on a matter of 
principle like other honorable and reputable public 
men. His political career has certainly been brave, 
earnest, and consistent, always. 

I think I may therefore say confidently that the 
candidates may be trusted. 

OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 

Why, then, can we not safely support such men, 
on such a platform ? 

One of the very first objections which is urged by 
the adherents of the administration to the support of 
our candidates and platform is the fact that the 
Democratic party supports them. This objection is a 



LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINDICATED. l-iT 

novel one, and will bear looking at. Let us analyze 
it for a moment. Granted, for instance, that the suc- 
cess of this ticket is a good and worthy object in 
itself, and that we as Liberal Republicans are ear- 
nestly devoted to it, it is nevertheless gravely urged 
that we should abandon it because somebody is try- 
ing to help us. That seems to be about the substance 
of the objection. If your church were trying to help 
some worthy object, would you refuse to contribute 
because the members of another society had made 
up their minds to assist you ? 

Indeed, what romantic political wisdom it would 
be if the friends of the Liberal movement should 
abandon it because of the very accession of strength 
needed to give it success ! Yes, the Democratic 
party have resolved to help us, and I rejoice at it and 
honor them for it. No grander or nobler political 
movement has been made in this country for the last 
half century than this voluntary indorsement and 
support by a great party of a platform which they 
had no hand in making, and of candidates who have 
been lifelong political opponents, on the high and 
patriotic ground of rescuing the country from its 
present calamitous and threatening mismanagement 
and misrule. I am not only not ashamed, but I am 
entirely proud to work with Democrats for the suc- 
cess of our noble ticket and platform. The Demo- 
cratic party wisely recognize the fact that the war is 
over, that its result settled certain questions forever, 
that the old issues have passed away, and that the 
present great duty of the hour is to defeat and turn 
out of power the incompetent and corrupt politicians 



148 LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINDICATED. 

who now rule the country for their own profit and 
to its peril. 

"GONE OVER TO THE DEMOCRATS." 

Because Democrats work with Liberal Republicans 
for the common good, we are persistently charged 
with having entirely ceased to be Republicans, and 
having " gone over to the Democrats." This charge 
is entirely worthy of that singular confusion of ideas, 
which, like the ancient confusion of tongues, has 
seized upon the Grant party this year. On this 
principle, the moment two men work together for a 
common object they at once lose name and identity, 
and one becomes the other, and the other becomes 
the one ; just as we hear it charged almost in the 
same breath that we have become Democrats, and 
that the Democrats have abandoned their principles 
and become Republicans. This kind of logic re- 
minds me of the two Hibernian gentlemen, who, 
on meeting and making a mutual mistake of each 
other's identity, one of them exclaimed, "And you 
thought it was me, and I thought it was you, when 
sure it was nather of us ! " 

Can it be that these Grant men have such a horror 
of Democrats ? Have I dreamed it in my recent ill- 
ness, or is it a fact that great sums of money and 
whole dictionaries of honeyed words have recently 
been poured out by the partizans and organs of the 
administration, to resuscitate and to encourage what 
they were pleased to call the "Democratic party" 
proper, in the persons of a few malcontents, who 
used to be the bane of that great organization, and 
who are still too politically vile to be lifted up with 



LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINDICATED. 149 

its present great and patriotic movement ? Ah, if a 
Democrat will stultify himself by either, directly or 
indirectly, helping Grant, he is a most excellent 
citizen and patriot, but if he votes for Greeley, he 
becomes at once a rebel and a traitor. 

I may say in this connection that it is claimed by 
our opponents that large numbers of Democrats are 
going to vote for Grant. Now, taking their own 
logic for it, this makes them all Democrats ; for do 
you not see that if one section of the Democratic 
party, by voting for Greeley, makes all liberal Re- 
publicans Democrats, then the support of Grant by 
the other section, must have a like effect upon his 
party .'' " Logic is logic," Wendell Holmes says, and 
I tell you that nothing like the logic of these (irant 
men has been seen in our generation. 

RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF SLA\ EI^V — PAYMENT OF 
THE REBEL DEBT — REBEL PENSIONS, ETC. 

But with equal effrontery and hardihood, our 
opponents this year charge and assert that if Mr. 
Greeley is elected, he and his party will favor the 
payment of the rebel debt, the pensioning of rebel 
soldiers, the disenfranchisement of the blacks, and 
many assert that there will be danger of the repu- 
diation of our own debt and the re-establishment of 
slavery itself 

In answering this charge, I may be permitted to 
say, in the first place, that General Grant's friends 
this year seem to be equally as ignorant of law as 
of logic, for they ought to know that all these things 
that Mr. Greeley and the terrible Democrats are 
going to overthrow, are now incorporated in the 



150 LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINDICATED. 

Constitution, and are, therefore, so far beyond the 
reach of party action that they can not be touched 
by any act of Congress, or a single act of the execu- 
tive. They ought to know that to do any of these 
things the Constitution of the country must be 
changed, which, as any bright schoolboy might tell 
them, would require a two-thirds vote of Congress 
and a ratification of three fourths of all the States. 
Maybe they think Mr. Greeley would have power to 
do all that, even if he wanted to. 

But really, fellow citizens, this charge, like all the 
rest, is amazing for its utter effrontery. I am morti- 
fied and astonished to see such stuff apparently 
believed by some of my neighbors and friends, who 
know enough to take pretty good care of themselves, 
and many of whom are even called men of intelli- 
gence. Is it possible that all common sense and 
candor are leaving these men, and that whole 
masses of our countrymen are becoming politically 
demented, so that they will believe lies too silly for 
even demagogues to repeat .-* For, look at this mat- 
ter a moment. Will these things be done, in case of 
Mr. Greeley's election ? In the first place, the law 
and the Constitution show you they can not be done. 
In the next place, as the Cincinnati platform is 
squarely committed against them all ; as Mr. Greeley 
pledges himself to that platform, and is even now 
repeating the pledge almost every day ; as all the 
leading Democratic statesmen of the country ex- 
pressly repudiate the charge, and accept the platform 
without reserve or qualification ; as nobody, indeed, 
at the North or the South, expresses any wish or 
desire to have these things done, — we are, therefore, 



LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINUICATED. 151 

compelled to believe, if this charge is true, that here 
is a stupendous and perfectly concealed political 
conspiracy, such as the world has never seen. There 
are over three million Democratic voters in this 
country ; have they all met in secret conclave, and 
agreed on this terrible program ? 

Nonsense, nonsense, fellow citizens. Nobody but 
political boobies will believe such a nursery tale as 
this. Edmund Burke once said that "he knew not 
how to frame an indictment against a whole people." 
So I know not how to entertain such a suspicion of 
millions of my countrymen. Why, this thing is not 
only impossible in law, as I have already shown, but 
it is impossible even without that barrier, for two or 
three plain and manifest reasons, which I will give. 

In the first place, I must put some faith yet in my 
fellow men. Now, it so happens that the leading 
statesmen in the Democratic party are men of high 
personal character and honor. Who has ever even 
heard to the contrary of such public men as Mr. 
Hendricks, Mr. Pendleton, Governor Hoffman, Mr. 
Groesbeck, or even Horatio Seymour ? With these 
men we have politically differed in the past, and we 
have many times criticized their public acts and 
utterances, but their private integrity and honor is 
unquestioned, and this is enough for my present pur- 
pose. Their word is good. Now I ask. Are all these 
men to become suddenly liars and repudiators im- 
mediately on Mr. Greeley's election ? — I do not 
believe it. I have already shown the personal 
guaranty we have in the character of the candidates. 

But look again at the character and position of 
leading Republican statesmen engaged in this move- 



152 LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINDICATED. 

ment. Who calls Charles Sumner a poltroon and a 
liar ? — Nobody, unless he be a liar and poltroon him- 
self. Is Mr. Sumner likely to sell out or abandon 
the principles of his whole life, the principles at the 
close of his magnificent career as a statesmen ? Who 
believes it .'' And can not I predicate personal honor 
of such public men as Mr. Trumbull, Mr. Schurz, 
Governor Curtin, Governor Palmer, and other em- 
inent liberal Republican leaders.? Would they all 
be likely to consent to the utter overthrow and 
destruction of the work of the past twelve years in 
which they bore such honorable part ? 

And would the South itself desire these things to 
be done .'' I tell you, far from it. Not a word now 
comes from that section in favor of any such meas- 
ures. On the contrary, the South is only too anxious 
to be done with contention over slavery and the war. 

Now suppose Mr. Greeley elected, and the new 
party in power. If you can possibly surmount all 
the barriers and safeguards I have already given 
against the inauguration of such a policy, can you 
suppose that the new administration and its support- 
ers would have such amazing and unparalleled po- 
litical blindness and stupidity as to undo the very 
measures which a great majority of the American 
people have so recently approved and are known to 
be still in favor of, thus making it certain that their 
party would be indignantly turned out of power at 
the very next election ? 

And this consideration alone, to say nothing about 
all the other reasons, is enough to utterly dissipate 
this charge, and convince any man whose judgment 
is not completely destroyed by his prejudice, that no 



LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINDICATED. 153 

such terrible things are possible to happen under Mr. 
Greeley's administration. It is all the while charged 
that the Democratic party want simply to obtain 
possession of the offices. Surely if this is the case, 
they ought to know enough to keep them after they 
get them. 

THE WORK OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY DONE. 

Fellow citizens, there comes an end at last to 
political issues and political parties. They have 
their day of usefulness and excitement, and then 
pass into history. So it is here. The great work 
of the Republican party is done, and the old issues 
between it and its antagonist have passed away for- 
ever. Slavery is abolished, the black man has all the 
rights that we have, the South has surrendered, the 
war is over. My Republican friends, after having 
followed the standards of our party over all these 
victorious fields, can we not now be left to do what 
we think for the best interests of the country in the 
new times which have arisen ? — I think we can. I 
think we can consistently and safely support so good 
and great a man as Horace Greeley on these new 
issues of reform in our politics and civil service. 

A WORD TO ANTI-CHANDLER REI'UBLICANS. 
And in this connection let me say a word to those 
Republicans in our own State who, recognizing the 
tyranny and disgrace of the Chandler rule, still think 
that they can correct the abuse, and overthrow this 
unscrupulous demagogue by an effort inside the 
party. I tell you, my friends, you are sadly mis- 
taken. Let General Grant be re-elected and Michi- 
gan carried for him this year, and two years from 



154 LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINDICATED. 

now Chandler will have the party in this State more 
completely under his sway than ever before. With 
the prestige of success, and with a new lease of 
favor and patronage at Washington, he will easily 
buy his way through the legislature. 

For then all the strongest and best men in the 
party who have heretofore tried unsuccessfully to 
break his power will have left it, and you will have 
to fight the battle, now more than ever unequal, all 
alone. Can you hope for success under such circum- 
stances ? — I tell you never. You do not fully esti- 
mate the power of this man, nor the sources of it. 
He has ruled the politics of Michigan for years, set- 
ting up and pulling down whomsoever he pleased. 
Where does he get this power .^ He is a. man of no 
extraordinary capacity ; he is without culture, social 
or intellectual ; he is not an orator ; he is not a 
statesman, and most certainly he is not a saint. 
And all the while he has been a disgrace also to his 
State in the national Senate. 

I will tell you where he gets his strength. He 
gets it from Washington. He gets it by controlling 
absolutely the entire federal patronage for Michigan. 
General Grant has made him a sort of viceroy, or 
lord lieutenant, for this State, and put him to rule 
over us. That rule will continue as long as Grant is 
president. He knows no other man in Michigan. 
Chandler's word is omnipotent with him. 

And do you think you can re-elect Grant and then 
defeat Chandler.? You entirely miscalculate. You 
overrate your own strength. Let me tell you Re- 
publicans who do not belong to the Chandler ring, 
who do not bow the knee to him, that you are as 



LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINDICATED. 155 

powerless in your party as a flock of sheep. You 
have really no voice in it to control its policy or 
nominations. You may simply vote for such men as 
Chandler shall suffer to be nominated. That is all 
you can do. 

We can not dislodge this man with tufts of grass- 
We must use harder weapons. There is a way to 
overthrow him, surely and forever, and that is to 
defeat General Grant and elect Horace Greeley. We 
must go to the fountain-head. Purify that, and the 
streams will be pure. Chandlerism is one of the 
streams that flow from Grant's administration. I 
appeal to you, my old Republican friends of Mich- 
igan, who agree with me as to this man and his rule 
in this State, come up with us, and help to put an end 
forever to personal government and political despot- 
ism in the State and in the nation alike. 

THE REBELS SUPPORT GREELEY- 

Coming back now to the main question, I notice 
here another objection which is continually urged by 
our opponents, and that is that the "rebels support 
Greeley." 

It is undoubtedly true that the masses of the 
Southern people do favor the election of Mr. Greeley, 
but it is not true that all the rebels support him. 
Some of the worst of them support General Grant, 
and some have received their reward in the shape of 
federal patronage. But this objection comes very 
inconsistently and with very bad grace from the 
followers of a president who, immediately on his 
accession to office, appointed one of the leading 
rebel generals to a lucrative position under the 



15() LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINDICATED. 

government which he had just done so much to 
overthrow, and from the adherents of a party whose 
national convention this very year selected for its 
presiding officer a rebel, apparently solely on that 
ground, for it would be difficult to tell what else he 
had ever been or done to deserve such a distinction. 
And another rebel, more distinguished and eminent, 
was called to the stage by the convention, and 
honored with a personal ovation. I believe that the 
presiding officers of the conventions at Cincinnati 
and Baltimore were loyal men. 

But not to speak of its inconsistency, the objection 
amounts to nothing in itself The Southern people 
would be a very foolish people if they did not prefer 
Mr. Greeley to General Grant. Desiring now only 
peace and fraternity, they would be most unwise to 
reject the most eminent advocate of such a policy, in 
favor of a man who is largely running on the basis of 
hate towards them, and whose administration has 
put upon them continued burdens and indignities 

DEMAGOGUES WANT TO FIGHT THE WAR AGAIN. 

And now, fellow citizens, why is it that all these 
untenable objections are urged, and all these foolish 
things are said .' I will tell you why it is. It is 
because the Mortons, the Camerons, and the Chand- 
lers who control this administration, in the absence 
of any sound defense for their cause, and in order to 
retain their power, are endeavoring to stir up the 
old .war feeling and excite the passions of the 
Northern people against the South. They have 
given this key note to the campaign, and started 
this old war cry because that has been the tocsin 



LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINDICATED. 157 

which has led the way to power before, and they 
think they can succeed now if they can get the 
people of the North to fight the war again in its 
old animosities and its rankling recollections. 

FOUR YEARS AGO — " LET US HAVE PEACE." 

Four years ago our Republican watchword was, 
" Let us have peace." We promised peace and good 
government to the South, as well as to the North. 
The words were cheap enough. They were General 
Grant's ; but they were clear and full of good 
promise for the country, and we elected General 
Grant upon them. Now what do we see.-' — Tyran- 
nical legislation, bayonet government, and carpet-bag 
plunder at the South and at the North, the Repub- 
lican watchword changed to " Remember Anderson- 
ville." Fellow citizens, we want peace now more 
than ever before. The country needs it ; the South 
implores it. 

A PLEA FOR RECONCILIATION. 

The acc[uiescence of the South in the Cincinnati 
platform, and their acceptance of Horace Greeley, I 
regard as their political surrender, as Appomattox 
was their military. It is the final giving up on their 
part of their old ideas, and the acceptance of all the 
results of the war. We can not coerce or change 
their opinions about the war, we have no right to 
demand individual repentance in a matter of states- 
manship like this. It is enough that the Southern 
people now know and feel the great mistake which 
they made in going into rebellion. I still think it 
was more than a mistake, that it was a great public 



158 LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINDICATED. 

offense against just laws and good government. But 
if their offense was great, most grievously have they 
been made to atone for it. Their military power was 
not only completely broken and their pride humbled, 
but their own prolonged and desperate resistance 
drenched their land in their best and bravest blood, 
and caused the desolation of their fields and towns in 
the fiery track of our great armies, which swept to 
their overthrow. 

And since the war they have drunk the cup of 
humiliation and sorrow to its very dregs. Their 
peculiar institution of slavery for which they went 
to war, went down in the war, literally pulled down 
by their own hands ; and their former slaves, assisted 
by unscrupulous Northern adventurers, have been 
their political masters since. They have been made 
to learn, in all its terrible significance, the lesson of 
Holy Writ, "They that take the sword shall perish 
by the sword." I still feel that there has been a 
measure of justice in all this. They drew it upon 
their own heads by their own mad and guilty act- 
But there must be an end of punishment or there 
can not be justice in the world. In this case it seems 
to me that justice has had her due. The Southern 
people to-day, standing in the midst of their des- 
olated fields and ruined commerce, groaning under 
their humiliation and burdened by a fearful load of 
taxation imposed by the unscrupulous Northern 
adventurers who have seized their governments and 
plundered their substance, cry out to us for political 
quarter. They appeal to us now for protection, for 
peace, and for final reconciliation. 

Fellow citizens, shall we refuse to listen to this 



LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINDICATED. 159 

appeal ? Will it be wise, will it be good statesman- 
ship, to do so ? Can we not now afford to be just, to 
be magnanimous, even ? They are our own country- 
men ; we must live with them in the same Union, and 
sustain together the same government. We can not 
afford to hate them, we can not afford to oppress 
them. This is called a Christian land, and we live in 
an era of moral light. Brotherly love and forgive- 
ness of injuries stand next to love to God in the 
Christian system. Shame on this cry for vengeance 
which we hear. Shame on this political watchword 
which comes from the mouths of demagogues, " Re- 
member Andersonville." It is unworthy of civilized 
men. It is the war whoop of savages, the battle cry 
of Black Kettle and Spotted Tail on the track of 
their enemies. 

" Let us have peace." That is«the only true states- 
manship. And with it final reconciliation. We 
want no policy of hate and proscription. We want 
no subjugated people, no Irelands or Polands, in our 
midst. The wounds of civil war must be healed, or 
there will be perpetual irritation in the state. See 
how England healed such wounds after the great 
civil wars between the houses of York and Lancaster, 
and the later one between the Stuarts and the Parlia- 
ment. The Tudors and the Plantagenets, the Cava- 
lier and the Puritans, were all Englishmen when the 
strife was done, and for centuries their descendants 
have reaped their loyal harvests over the fields of 
Towton and Barnet, of Naseby and Marston Moor. 
And that great English nation by such reconciliation 
and knitting together of her people stands to-day as 
firmly compact as her rock-bound island in the midst 



KiO LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINDICATED. 

of the sea, the most homogeneous and thoroughly 
welded people on the globe. 

A WORD ABOUT CIVIL SERVICE. 

And next to this great need of reconciliation and 
final peace between the North and the South, is the 
necessity for reform in the civil administration of the 
government. I can not go over this field as I would 
like ; I have not the time nor the strength. I can 
only call your attention to two vital and fundamental 
things, which I deem essential to this reform. In the 
first place, we must, as the Cincinnati platform 
promises, limit the presidency to a single term. If 
four years is not long enough, make the term longer, 
I say, but let it be put into the Constitution that no 
president shall be his own successor. That is the 
only way we can keep presidents from struggling to 
be their own successors, and such struggles do more 
to destroy the honesty and efficiency of our civil 
service than any or all other causes combined. We 
can not remake or remodel human nature, and it is 
useless to say that presidents need not seek re- 
election and that they may be pure and disinterested 
enough not to do so. That does not meet the case. 
We know that they may do so, and that some of them 
will, and then we know what will follow. 

Look at the example before us to-day. Talk 
about Grant's being pledged to civil service ! Why, 
in the effort for his own re-election he is doing more 
to debauch our civil service than words can tell. He 
never commanded sixty thousand soldiers in the field 
who were so completely drilled and under his abso- 
lute rule as these sixty thousand office holders of the 



LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINDICATED. 101 

government who are now clamoring for his re- 
election. Where is their independence .'' Where is 
their sense of duty ? 

And at the same time, this civil-service president 
is seeking to perpetuate himself in office by the use 
of money to carry caucuses and elections in such 
sums as were never heard of before, and in a manner 
to corrupt the whole civil state. I do not say that it 
is his money, but it is expended by his partizans for 
his and their benefit, and he must know it if he knows 
anything. Fellow citizens, how long will it take to 
reform the civil service in this way ? No, we must 
go to the root of this matter, we must limit the presi- 
dency to a single term. 

CONCLUSION — FINAL APPEAL. 
And the second great essential to civil-service re- 
form lies with the people themselves. They must 
elect honest and competent men to public office. 
The immense patronage of the government is con- 
trolled, under the appointing power, by men whom 
the people directly elect. When these officers are 
worthy of this great trust, you can have pure civil 
service, but you can never have it before. So this 
whole business comes back to the people at last. 

HONEST AND COMPETENT MEN FOR OFFICE. 
And now, fellow citizens, I submit my defense of 
our great cause, feeling how little I have said where 
so much might be said. But my strength is ex- 
hausted, and I turn reluctantly away from this great 
field of discussion. I know I have spoken sincerely ; 
I trust I have spoken candidly. A solemn public 
duty rests upon us. Let us meet it like men who 



162 LIBERAL REPUBLICANISM VINDICATED. 

realize its importance, and above all, with manly- 
courage, with judgment unwarped by party prejudice, 
with hearts undaunted by party fear. 

The strifes and struggles of parties, the contests 
of opinion, for us, will by and by be over. Let us 
hope that when we are gone, our country will still 
remain great, free, and united, with no hates or atii- 
mosities between sections or races to disturb its 
peace or threaten its perpetuity, with no central des- 
potism to oppress any of its parts, but guided by jus- 
tice and magnanimity, and upheld by the loyal devo- 
tion of a great people reconciled and at peace with 
each other, and standing together as one man for a 
common government and a common flag. 



CHARLES SUMNER. 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : 

It has been truly said that the contemphition of a 
great character is always an interesting and instruc- 
tive work. Mankind are taught better by example 
than by precept, and great lives are the best teachers 
of great virtues. It is the mission, indeed, of great 
men to quicken and exalt the common life of human- 
ity by showing the almost divine possibilities of our 
nature, and God sends such men into the world when 
needed to save nations and to hold up exalted moral 
standards. They do not appear in regular order or 
in unbroken succession. Sometirpes they come singly, 
sometimes in royal companies. Nor do all teach the 
same lesson or perform the same work. Some stand 
for religion, some for patriotism, some for heroism. 
Still other lofty lives, lifted above the common level, 
stand for warning. For not all eminence is the emi- 
nence of virtue. History has its fiery meteors and 
baleful comets as well as its fixed stars and orderly 
planets. The former blind by their brilliancy or awe 
by their m}'stery ; the latter shine ever on in the 
serene depths with steady and invigorating light, 
and so teach mankind the eternal verities. And 
over all God watches and rules for the good of men. 

You have set apart this occasion for contemplation 
of the life and character of a great man, and you 

' A Eulogy delivered before the Faculty and Societies of Kalamazoo 
College, June 16, 1874. 

16:! 



164 CHARLES SUMNER. 

have asked me to pronounce his eulogy. It is a 
theme most fit to engage your attention. Charles 
Sumner was not only an illustrious statesman and 
orator, but he was also a distinguished scholar. I 
know of no name in all our annals so well calculated 
to inspire the enthusiasm of young men at college, 
or to stand for their model, as his. Through this 
shining gateway of knowledge he passed in his ardent 
youth ; up the rugged steeps upon which your feet 
have entered he went with proud and conquering 
step, and he stands now yonder, on the immortal 
heights, forever beckoning you onward and upward. 

Nothing could be more fitting, therefore, than that 
you should mark his name for honor, and drink deep 
of the inspiration of his life. And for what is not fit- 
ting in him who is to speak upon such a theme, I can 
only plead that Charles Sumner was my ideal states- 
man ; that from the days of my boyhood he has been 
my bright particular star among our public men, com- 
manding always more than any other my admira- 
tion, my confidence, and my profoundest esteem. I 
have greatly honored other noble men and leaders in 
the struggles of our later history, but not with such 
honor and admiration as were called forth by the no- 
ble senator from my native State, who ever seemed 
to me to stand forth on the field of conflict like the 
chivalrous knight of France, without fear and with- 
out reproach. 

To you then, students and others connected with 
these societies and with this institution of learning, 
and to my fellow citizens here assembled, let me 
speak of Charles Sumner. The first spontaneous 
utterances of grief and lament for his loss which 



CHARLES SUMNER. lt)5 

filled all the land have ceased ; the funeral pageants, 
so grand and impressive, have passed ; the noble old 
commonwealth, like a proud and sorrowing mother, 
has tenderly laid the ashes of her great son in her 
Westminster Abbey, where are gathered so many of 
the great and good, and the flowers of the opening 
summer bloom upon his grave in the beautiful Mount 
Auburn. In the calm which has come after the first 
burst of sorrow has been spent, we may now contem- 
plate that great life in the light in which men will 
hereafter view it, and in which it will take its perma- 
nent place in history. I know it is the common 
fault of eulogy that it is too sweeping and indiscrimi- 
nate ; that it sees no defects or blemishes, but only 
virtues, in its subjects. But eulogy, like history, 
should be truthful. It should not make defects where 
there are none, and if the public, and private life of 
Charles Sumner was stainless and spotless, let me 
paint him as he was. 

MR. SUMNER'S EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION — HIS 
PREPARATION FOR STATESMANSHIP. 

Charles Sumner had a most ample preparation for 
the career of statesmanship. Unlike so many of our 
public men who have achieved eminence, he was 
born to fortune and to large advantages of education. 
His native city was the one, of all others on the con- 
tinent, most noted for intellectual culture and historic 
interest, and he was early admitted to all the oppor- 
tunities of its famous institutions of literature and 
law. Its very streets were consecrated to patriotism 
and learning. It had been the theater of some of 
the earliest and most thrilling events in the great 



166 CHARLES SUMNER. 

drama of the Revolution, and many of its buildings 
still bore the scars of the conflict. Bunker Hill and 
Faneuil Hall were there, the memory of Warren 
was a near and daily presence, and John Adams and 
other great leaders of the Revolution still lingered 
upon the scene, their venerable forms familiar upon 
the streets. 

In the midst of such scenes and opportunities, the 
impressible youth of Sumner was passed. How he 
improved these rich advantages the world already 
knows. He was early enrolled a student within the 
classic walls of Harvard, where he pursued his stud- 
ies with enthusiastic ardor, soon evincing a peculiar 
love for those fields of culture which lay in the direc- 
tion of his great life-work. From the college he 
passed to the law school, where his fine promise soon 
attracted the attention and secured the friendship of 
that eminent jurist, Judge Story, the memory of 
V. hose own great learning and ability and vast ju- 
dicial labors has been revived in the minds of his 
countrymen by the death of his illustrious pupil. 
When called to Washington by his duties upon the 
bench of the supreme court, Judge Story recom- 
mended young Sumner to fill his place as law lecturer 
in the institution, which he did with marked success ; 
and afterward, declining a permanent chair in the 
law school, and the still more flattering offer of a 
professorship in the college, he spent several years 
in general and wide reading of law and literature 
and in travel and study in Europe. Returning to 
Boston, he commenced the practise of his profession 
under the most flattering auspices. 



CHARLES SUMNER. 167 

MR. SUMNER AS A LAWYER. 

But he was not destined to run the career of the 
mere lawyer, even in the higher walks of the profes- 
sion. He had mastered the noble science of the law 
as a part of general literature ; he had given special 
attention to it in its relation to government and in 
its wider aspects as affecting the welfare of races 
and of nations ; in short, he had imbued his mind 
with its history and its philosophy. While this was 
noble study and acquisition for a lawyer, it was still 
better for the future statesman. It was better prep- 
aration for statesmanship than for practise in the 
courts. True, Mr. Sumner did, for more than ten 
years, pursue the profession, arguing cases and 
notably filling the office of legal reporter in the 
district court of the United States, over which 
Judge Story presided, and editing, meanwhile, with 
great research and ability, a series of English re- 
ports, receiving from Judge Story in the meantime 
the high compliment that he was, at the beginning 
of his professional career, well fitted in legal learn- 
ing to occupy a seat on the bench of the supreme 
court of the United States. But he never met the 
rougher experiences, the severe and sometimes rude 
encounters of the bar, like so many eminent lawyers, 
and like those who achieve success in the profession, 
especially at the West. In this technical and prac- 
tical sense Mr. Sumner was not distinguished at the 
bar. Indeed, it is doubtful if he ever would have 
made a successful jury lawyer. His mind had more 
breadth and strength than acuteness, his tempera- 



168 CHARLES SUMNER. 

ment was not electric, and his great learning and 
habits of generalization would have made him 
unwieldly before a jury. Besides this, his moral 
purposes were more suited to lofty themes than to 
the questions of private dispute with which the 
mere jury advocate has to deal. 

But happily, he did not need to settle these ques- 
tions by actual experience. His private, inherited 
fortune placed him above the pecuniary want which 
has been the hard but powerful stimulus of so many 
noble minds. He did not, like Erskine, that fore- 
most and greatest of advocates, feel dependent 
offspring tugging at his lawyer's gown for bread, 
but he was left free to pursue congenial studies and 
to follow the natural bent of his mind. Thus saved 
from sinking the man in the lawyer, and repressing 
noble desires from base necessities, with learning so 
ample and profound, with a fine and manly presence 
and an eloquence at once polished, graceful, and 
commanding, he was a public man even before he 
was called to fill public station ; a man well and 
carefully fitted for the service of the state when she 
should need him. And so, when in 1845, after a 
succession of masterly addresses, he pronounced be- 
fore the corporation of his native city that great 
oration on "The True Grandeur of Nations," — an 
oration which filled the country with admiration, 
and drew answering plaudits from across the Atlan- 
tic, — all the world saw that Massachusetts had a 
noble scholar and orator, with the highest graces of 
person, mind, and character, with lofty aims and 
principles, full armed and equipped, and ready to 



CHARLES SUMNER. 169 

obey her call to enter the arena of statesmanship, 
and bear aloft her traditional standard. 

HIS ELECTION TO THE SENATE. 
The summons soon came. In the spring of 1851, 
by a fortunate combination of parties in the legisla- 
ture, building wiser than they knew, he was elected 
to the Senate of the United States. The office had 
come unsought, though not unwelcome. During the 
long struggle at the State-house, which lasted for 
months, and attracted the attention of the whole 
country, he had daily passed to and from his office, 
but had never once looked in upon the contest, nor 
spoken to a single member upon the subject of the 
election. In vain overanxious and well-meaning 
friends besought him to do this. He stood firm, and 
no word of importunity or impatience escaped him. 
And when at last the position w^s his, it had come 
without solicitation and without pledges. It is 
doubtful if a United States senator has ever since 
been elected in that way ; but that was the fashion 
in the early days of the Republic, before the evil 
days came upon us, and before the public service 
had become demoralized. The office used to seek 
the man, and not the man the office. 

CONDITION OF PARTIES AT HIS ENTRANCE UPON 
PUBLIC LIFE. 
Charles Sumner was now forty years of age, and in 
the first full strength of his intellectual manhood. 
He had appeared upon the national scene at an im- 
portant conjuncture of public affairs. There were 
evidences on every hand of an approaching change 



170 CHARLES SUMNER. 

in public sentiment and in the control of political 
parties. His own election had, indeed, been one of 
the most ominous portents of the coming revolution. 
The slavery question had entered the field of polit- 
ical action, and the old parties had already begun to 
be dashed to pieces upon that unyielding rock. The 
Whig party, which had carried the country for Har- 
rison in 1840, been defeated by its adversary in 
1844, though led by Henry Clay, and again success- 
ful with General Taylor in 1848, was the first to 
show signs of disintegration. The leaven of anti- 
slavery had largely entered this organization, espe- 
cially in New England ; but an attempt had been 
made in the party to suppress these antislavery 
tendencies, and this effort had the weight and sanc- 
tion of the name and leadership of Daniel Webster, 
the great Whig orator and statesman. 

The open rupture came in 1848, when the then 
immediate question of the prohibition of slavery in 
the new territories acquiried in the Mexican war 
divided the party, and led to the formation of what 
was called, with felicitous propriety, the "Free-Soil 
party," an organization composed of the seceding 
antislavery Whigs, of independent Democrats, and 
largely re-enforced by the members of the " Liberty 
party," the pioneers of practical antislavery, an 
organization which had polled about seven thousand 
votes for James G. Birney for president in 1840, and 
nearly seventy thousand for the same candidate in 
1844. Charles Sumner had, after vainly struggling 
to bring the Whig party of Massachusetts up to the 
antislavery standard, joined the new Free-Soil party. 
It carried no State for Van Buren and Adams in 



CHARLES SUMNER. 171 

1848, but it polled more than a third of a million 
votes, and was the forerunner of the great Republi- 
can party which was formed six years later, and which 
carried the country for Abraham Lincoln in 18G0. 

MR. SUMNER AN ANTISLAVERV MAN — HIS 
WATCHWORD. 

Charles Sumner had long been an antislavery man. 
With rare fidelity to conviction and to truth he had 
turned his back upon all apparent self-interest, upon 
all the professional and political prospects so inviting 
to a talented and ambitious young man, had at the 
same time resisted the still stronger blandishments 
and menaces of his aristocratic social surroundings, 
freely dedicating himself to the cause of the poor and 
oppressed, and braving the social and political ostra- 
cism of the rich and the powerful. But though an 
antislavery man, he believed 'in political action. 
Garrison, on the contrary, had taken the ground of 
disunion, and for his motto in the struggle, " The 
Constitution is a league with death and a covenant 
with hell." Charles Sumner took for his watchword, 
"Freedom National —7 Slavery Sectional," and kept 
that lofty political truth upon his banner until the 
battle was over. He believed and insisted that 
there was power enough under the Constitution to 
resist the spread of slavery, and to bring back the 
government to the antislavery ground held by the 
founders and early statesmen of the Republic. 

A GLANCE AT MR. SUMNER'S CAREER IN THE SENATE 
— HIS ASSOCIATES AND LABORS. 
Of Mr. Sumner's career in the Senate I shall not 
speak in detail nor follow further his life in chrono- 



172 CHARLES SUMNER. 

logical order. His history since his entrance into 
public life has been a part of the history of the nation 
in its most important and tragic epoch ; he has played 
his part in a high place and in the sight of all his 
countrymen, and if there were any need that the 
facts and incidents of his senatorial career should be 
recounted, it has already been amply and sufficiently 
done in the thousand eulogies of press and tongue 
since his death. His early history was less familiar, 
and seemed a fitting and necessary introduction to a 
proper analysis of his public character. 

Let me pass on, therefore, with only a glance at 
Mr. Sumner's career in the Senate from that first day 
of December, 1851, when he took his seat in that his- 
toric chamber as the successor of Daniel Webster — 
the very day on which Henry Clay, the great com- 
moner of America, spoke his last word and left it 
forever — until the tenth day of March, 1874, when he, 
also, weary and worn with pain and disease, though 
not yet broken by age, his gray locks illustrious with 
service to his country and mankind, bade a pathetic 
though unconscious adieu to the great hall, and went 
home to die. When he sat down in that Senate of 
1851, with Cass and Seward and Douglas for his 
associates, slavery and compromise ruled supreme. 
The senatorial seats were filled with haughty slave 
masters from the South and submissive politicians 
from the North, with two men only in the whole body 
who fully sympathized with him in his antislavery 
position and stood with him in that apparently forlorn 
hope of freedom, — the bold and ready John P. Hale 
and Salmon P. Chase, afterward the great secretary 



CHARLES SUMNER. 173 

and chief justice. Seward, it is true, was antislavery, 
but he was a Whig, and he had not yet broken with 
his party at the South. 

In that body of slaveholders and slavery-sup- 
porters, Sumner received no political or social recog- 
nition. He was assigned no place on the committees, 
and when in the summer of 1<S.")2 he raised his voice for 
the first time in that splendid and memorable speech 
against the Fugitive Slave law, he met the scornful 
and defiant glances of an enraged Senate. Other 
great speeches succeeded, arraigning slavery at the 
bar of the public judgment and conscience. Then fol- 
lowed the murderous assault of Brooks, which planted 
physical, nervous torture in his frame, and shortened 
his life. By and by came the war, and then, as the 
haughty representatives of slavery retired, Sumner 
for the first time found himself, with the majority, 
and was entrusted with the practical direction of 
measures and policies. How he filled that important 
chairmanship which was then given him, until 'within 
recent years he was dismissed from it under circum- 
stances of honor to him but of everlasting shame to 
those who did it, all the world knows. And all the 
while he was true to Freedom and the Union, never 
osing heart or hope. Finally, when the war had 
long been over, and when the great work of recon- 
struction was finished, there came that separation 
from the administration of his party and from 
old political and personal friends which tried 
anew his courage, and furnished the last severe 
test of his absolute obedience to his convictions 
of duty. 



174 CHARLES SUMNER. 

MR. SUMNER AS A STATESMAN — PECULIARITIES IN 
HIS CAREER. 

In considering Charles Sumner as a statesman, we 
are met at the outset by this striking peculiarity in 
his career : It was passed in the discharge of the 
duties of a single ofifice, that of senator from Massa- 
chusetts in the Congress of the United States. In 
this office, which has been filled by so many hundreds 
of undistinguished men since the foundation of the 
government, he performed his work and won his 
great fame. The man in our history who comes 
nearest to him in this respect is Thomas H. Benton, 
and he fails to furnish a parallel, for he had been a 
member of the other house of Congress. Most of 
our national statesmen of wide fame have filled 
different stations in the public service, and have had 
large opportunities and experiences. John Quincy 
Adams, whom Sumner resembled in scholarship and 
integrity, filled almost the entire round of the chief 
offices'under the government. Henry Clay, also, had 
a wide and diversified experience. 

Still another peculiarity is found in the fact that 
Sumner entered public life at the comparatively ma- 
ture age of forty, and finished his career at sixty- 
three, an age which is not considered old among 
statesmen. Here, also, he differs from most eminent 
statesmen in this and other countries. William Pitt, 
the younger, entered Parliament at twenty-one ; 
Gladstone at twenty-three ; John Quincy Adams 
began his public career at twenty-seven ; Henry 
Clay at twenty-nine ; John C. Calhoun at twenty- 
eight, and Daniel Webster at thirty-two. 

Charles Sumner, therefore, was not fortunate in 



CHARLES SUMNER. 175 

large opportunities ; and his career, as we have seen, 
was not among the longest. Only was he felicitous 
in being privileged to act his part in our grand and 
stirring times. Here he had an opportunity worthy 
of his mature preparation and his commanding tal- 
ents, and he improved it with sublime fidelity and 
courage. His is still another notable instance of 
that divine selection of men to serve and save great 
causes and interests at supreme moments and in 
national crises. 

THE COLOSSAL POWER OF SLAVERY WHICH HE 
ATTACKED. 

If we approach now to a view of the essential 
character of Mr. Sumner's work as a statesman, we 
shall see that it was his mission to lead in the great 
effort for national regeneration, — in lifting the nation 
up from slavery to freedom, and thus in serving it 
and saving it in the best and highest sense. We 
had this great evil of slavery in our political system, 
and from being at first an unfortunate exception it 
had come to be the rule in the administration of the 
government and in the general course of public opin- 
ion. It swayed and dominated alike over church and 
state, over pulpit and caucus. It laid its hand on the 
two great political parties of the country, and they 
made haste to do its bidding. Statesmen bowed their 
heads in the dust before it. and trembled at its slight- 
est frown. Its subtle and baleful influence permeated 
all public opinion, and penetrated to every avenue 
and corner of society. All organizations of men, of 
whatever name or purpose, yielded unquestioning 
obedience to its lordly behests. Free speech was 



176 CHARLES SUMNER. 

cowed into silence or pursued to martyrdom. The 
very springs and fountains of the popular thought 
and conscience were poisoned and corrupted. Nor 
did the sacred altars of religion escape the fearful 
contamination. Strange as it may seem now, even 
the churches of the land were made to uphold sla- 
very, and the ghastly and blasphemous paradox was 
exhibited of defending "the sum of all villainies" in 
the name of the blessed gospel of peace, charity, and 
liberty ! The institution which was afterward guilty 
of treason and rebellion against the government thus 
began its work by insulting reason, stifling conscience, 
and dethroning God in the souls of men. 

I know it is difficult by any use of words to m^ke 
the generation which has come upon the stage since 
the war realize the fearful sway and tyranny of the 
slave power in this country thirty years ago ; and 
even the men who lived and acted then have almost 
forgotten in these days of liberty (when slavery has 
been in its grave ten years) the full strength and 
prevalence of that fearful moral, political, and social 
influence which then ruled supreme. Some there 
are, the few survivors of that little band who com- 
posed the vanguard of the after-swelling and trium- 
phant hosts of freedom, who will perhaps remember 
the terrors of that colossal power against which they 
threw themselves with such uncalculating and heroic 
courage, in those dark days of the past. It was 
indeed a time of moral and political paralysis. All 
true love of liberty, all genuine manhood, seemed 
expiring in the hearts of men. We know now that 
this was the thick, stifling atmosphere which presages 
the earthquake and the hurricane. Only the war with 



CHARLES SUMNER. 177 

its flashing thunderbolts was able to rend and lift 
those murky clouds, and let in once more the pure 
light and air of freedom. 

It was against this dark institution of slavery, this 
gigantic public enemy, that Mr. Sumner waged unre- 
lenting, unceasing war. Slavery had become the 
nation's master. Its firm grasp upon the nation's 
throat must be shaken off or the nation would die. 
Sumner entered upon the stage in the days of expe- 
dients and compromises. The national capital was 
then, as it long had been before, the very fortress and 
citadel of oppression. The halls of Congress had long 
resounded to the apotheosis of slavery. Here his 
public career as a statesman commenced, — here in 
the very face of the enemy he began his work. He 
became the champion of imperiled freedom and the 
unrelenting foe of compromise. " Freedom national 
— Slavery sectional," "No Compromise with Sla- 
very," — these were his watchwords. 

THE CHAMPION OF AN IDEA IN STATESMANSHIP. 

Charles Sumner thus became the advocate and 
champion of an idea, a principle in statesmanship. It 
has often been said of him since, by way of criticism, 
that he was not a practical statesman ; that he was not 
expert and crafty in the details of legislation. Let 
this be fully admitted, and it falls far short of proving 
that Mr. Sumner was not a statesman of the best and 
highest type. 

For certainly it must be the noblest business of a 
statesman to deal with principles and ideas, and he 
must be greatest in the service of the state who builds 
his superstructure upon these eternal foundations. I 



178 CHARLES SUMNER. 

have no patience with that superpractical view of 
statesmanship which insists that he only is a states- 
man who shows aptitude and skill in the measures 
and policies of to-day. Undoubtedly, the affairs of 
to-day must be attended to, but they are not neces- 
sarily the most important. Statesmanship, like every 
other human interest, has its to-morrows ; and these 
must be provided for. The rule here holds good in 
greater things as it does in lesser. The wise man 
builds his house upon a rock, and makes careful 
provision for the future. So the wise statesman seeks 
to lay the beams of the national edifice on the solid 
and enduring foundations of eternal right and justice, 
and to provide wise rule for all after generations. 

NOT A VISIONARY AND IMPRACTICABLE STATESMAN. 

It is in this larger sense that I claim the highest 
meed of statesmanship for Charles Sumner. He did 
great and far-reaching work. At the same time I 
confidently assert that he was a careful and sound 
legislator upon minor questions of state, evincing 
always an excellent judgment in what have been 
called practical, every-day affairs. I know the popu- 
lar impression is the other way, but the popular im- 
pression has never been right upon this point. He 
was never wild or visionary. In the affair of the Trent 
he showed the highest prudence of diplomacy ; he was 
sound always upon the finances. These instances 
are notable, but they are not the only ones that 
might be given to show that Mr. Sumner was not a 
rash or imprudent public man. But it was in the 
greater questions of the state, where men did not see 
as far and as clearly as he, that he was called vision- 
ary and impracticable. 



CHARLES SUMNER. 179 

True, it was Mr. Sumner's great work and distinc- 
tion as a statesman to advocate an idea, a principle 
in government, rather than to manage a party or pro- 
vide for the annual budget. But his idea was a grand 
one, his principle was an immortal one, and its effects 
on men and governments most powerful and practical. 
An idealist, men say. But what was his idea.' — 
Liberty, that great flame which has fired the hearts of 
men in all lands and ages ; the cjuenchless inspiration 
of the heroes and martyrs of history. Liberty, the 
glory and felicity of nations which enjoy it, the undy- 
ing aspiration of nations and peoples which seek after 
it. The best blood of the centuries has reddened 
field and scaffold for it ; the most eloquent voices of 
the ages have pleaded in immortal words for this 
greatest boon of humanity. And is it not the best 
work of a statesman to seek to crystallize this benefi- 
cent principle into government, -and to make it the 
sure possession of posterity ? 

THE CHARGE THAT HE WAS NOT A PRACTICAL 

STATESMAN DENIED — ^ AN APPEAL TO THE RECORD. 

The claim which I make here for Mr. Sumner's 
statesmanship is justified by the great and beneficent 
results which have flowed from it. Not a practical 
statesman ! Whose work has been more grandly 
practical than his .'' Look at it. Four million slaves 
emancipated and made freemen and citizens of the 
Republic. What could be more practical to them .'' 
The Republic itself at last rid of its greatest curse 
and most dangerous enemy ; what could be more 
practical to it and to us ? Liberty, citizenship, en- 
franchisement, and civil rights ; national salvation 
and national honor, — these are intensely practical 



180 CHARLES SUMNER. 

things, and these are the objects which Mr. Sumner's 
statesmanship compassed. 

But still it is said that he was impracticable. If by 
this it is meant that he was unmanageable by mere 
politicians, and could not be induced to surrender 
principle for party, it is undoubtedly true. But if it 
be intended by this to say that as a statesman he 
proposed and advocated measures that could not be 
practically realized, or which were opposed to the 
true good of the country, then I confidently deny the 
charge and appeal to the facts to disprove it. What 
Mr. Sumner proposed and advocated in the Senate 
of the United States is well known to all the world. 
Let us look a moment at the record. 

HIS STATESMANSHIP BEFORE THE WAR. 

Take the questions which grew out of slavery and 
the war as the tests in this matter, for it was in these 
that he was said to be impracticable. His first speech 
in the Senate was in opposition to the Fugitive Slave 
law. He denounced it as unconstitutional, impoli- 
tic, and inhuman. His vote was recorded against it. 
Was he not right in this.-* What man now would 
have the country go back and stand upon the Fugi- 
tive Slave law ? Millard Fillmore signed that bill 
as president, and it was a millstone about his neck 
forever after. Which was right, the president or the 
senator ? 

Then, Mr. Sumner opposed the repeal of the Mis- 
souri Compromise and the Nebraska bill, voting and 
protesting in some of his most powerful speeches 
against those ill-starred measures. Who cjuestions 
now that it would have been better for the country 



CHARLES SUMNER. 181 

and its peace to have left the landmark of freedom 
undisturbed ? Stephen A. Douglas made here the 
mistake of his life, a mistake which cost him the 
presidency. 

Next, Mr. Sumner voted and protested against the 
spread of slavery into the Territories, and lifted up 
his voice in one of his most memorable utterances in 
denunciation of the "Crime against Kansas," — the 
daring attempt of slavery propagandists to plant 
slavery in that Territory by fraud and violence. 
Was he not right here ? Let the memory of Frank- 
lin Pierce, whose administration was guilty of com- 
plicity in the crime, answer. 

Then, in 1800 Mr. Sumner, gathering all his learn- 
ing, ability, and eloquence, from his high place in the 
Senate, arraigned the turbulent and threatening in- 
stitution in that terrible indictment contained in his 
speech entitled "The Barbarism, of Slavery." Here 
certainly he needs no vindication. All the world 
knows now that slavery was a relic of barbarism, and 
the very next year it added to its other crimes the 
greatest of all, and lighted the torch of civil war. 

HIS RECORD DURING THE WAR. 

When the war was impending, Mr. Sumner opposed 
the granting of the last concessions which slavery 
demanded of the North as the price of peace. He 
refused to compromise, and demanded that the 
government assert its just authority. Right again, 
clearly right. Concession would have been national 
humiliation, and peace thus purchased would have 
been national shame. Let the dishonored memory 
of James Buchanan, loaded down with the record of 



182 CHARLES SUMNER. 

his criminal weakness, in a great crisis which de- 
manded the will and courage of a man, testify to the 
clear, courageous, and lofty statesmanship of Charles 
Sumner at this supreme moment of our history. 

When the war came, Mr. Sumner was the first 
among our statesmen to urge the policy of emanci- 
pation. The policy was afterward adopted, it is 
true, but not until hundreds of thousands of precious 
lives had been sacrificed, and hundreds of millions of 
treasure had been sunk. History, which has already 
vindicated the policy, will, I think, write it down also 
that Mr. Sumner was nearest right in point of time, 

MR. SUMNER AND RECONSTRUCTION. 

Then after the war followed the work of recon- 
struction. Mr. Sumner was again the first among all 
our statesmen to comprehend the full significance of 
the revolution which the war had effected, and the 
great political changes which it had made necessary. 
He demanded and advocated for the emancipated 
millions those measures which he denominated the 
"irreversible guarantees of freedom" — citizenship, 
enfranchisement, civil rights ; these were the outlines 
of his policy. 

I have not time to go into the details here, as I 
would like ; but the history is recent, and I simply 
call your attention to the fact that in every step of 
this policy of reconstruction and legislative dealing 
with the emancipated race, Mr. Sumner led the way, 
reluctantly followed, a year behind, by a Senate and 
Congress which continually denounced him as " im- 
practicable." Year by year the spectacle was pre- 
sented of Mr. Sumner, at the opening of Congress, 



CHARLES SUMNER. 183 

proposing measures which, after being duly criticised 
and condemned as unreasonable and impracticable, 
were voted down by the majority only to be adopted 
at the next session or by the next Congress, when 
the wise and tireless champion had set his stakes 
still further ahead, to be again denounced and again 
followed. 

CRUEL DELAY OF HIS CIVIL RIGHTS BILL BY THE 
"PRACTICAL" STATESMEN. 

It is a singular history and a sad commentary on 
what is called practical statesmanship. We spent ten 
years in this work of reconstruction and in adopting 
measures which Mr. Sumner proposed at the outset, 
and which are now clearly seen to have been neces- 
sary. Saddest of all, the jealousy and opposition of 
these laggards who are called "practical" statesmen 
finally cheated Mr. Sumner of what would have been 
the extreme felicity of his life. Even his great Civil 
Rights bill, the crowning measure of reconstruction 
and of his glorious career as a statesman, must be 
postponed by them until after his death. O, cruel 
delay ! The death agony was made more intense by 
the thought, and this drew from the dying statesman 
that pathetic injunction to his friend, which so 
touched millions of hearts. How would that noble 
soul have thrilled with joy at the completion of the 
great work ! The grand old warrior of freedom could 
then have loosed his helmet, unbuckled his armor, 
and tasted the sweets of victory on the field where 
he had fought so long. 

What need that I should say more to prove that 
the charge, so often repeated, that Mr. Sumner was 



184 CHARLES SUMNER. 

an impracticable and visionary statesman, is not 
founded in the truth of history. Happy would it 
have been for the government and the people if all 
our statesmen and public men had been as "practical " 
as he, and had followed his example, and had recorded 
their votes and influence with him on these great 
questions to which I have referred. In every instance 
he is proved to have been right, and the "practical" 
statesmen to have been wrong. Thus time and 
history vindicate the truth and its champions. The 
"practical" statesmen are put to shame, their quib- 
bling evasions and hollow compromises are exposed 
and overthrown ; and the man who stood upon uncom- 
promising truth is crowned with immortal honor, and 
again is vindicated in these greater things the old 
and homely maxim, "Honesty is the best policy." 

SAN DOMINGO AND THE BATTLE-FLAG RESOLUTIONS. 

But I ought not to omit, in this connection, to 
speak of two important public questions where Mr. 
Sumner's action subjected him, at the time, to wide- 
spread misapprehension and denunciation. I allude 
to the San Domingo annexation scheme and the 
battle-flag resolutions. 

His action on the first of these questions was taken 
in opposition to the administration of his own party, 
and subjected him to great personal annoyance and 
insult, finally leading to an open rupture with the 
president and a sundering of his party relations 
Yet here he was clearly right, and his conduct in 
courageously opposing that ill-starred project was a 
signal service to his country, and worthy the highest 
admiration. For once he carried the country with 



CHARLES SUMNER. 185 

him, and defeated the measure. This certainly was 
"practical" statesmanship. 

His battle-flag resolution was least understood of 
all his public acts, at the time, and subjected him to 
a perfect tempest of denunciation from the political 
friends of a lifetime. Even Massachusetts made 
haste to visit her public censure upon the head of her 
great, true son as he sat there in his darkened chamber 
at Washington, bowed with disease and suffering. It 
is the saddest story in Mr. Sumner's life, and the blow 
was more cruel than that of Preston Brooks. The 
victim suffered in a silence that was heroic and grand. 
Thank God, the madness and misconception were 
only temporary. When reason returned, it was seen 
that the statesman was right and the people were 
wrong. Now, in all the land, the man could hardly 
be found to stand up and oppose the spirit and policy 
of Mr. Sumner's resolution. Seldom is a vindication 
so speedy and overwhelming, and this is the last 
instance which I need to give of the practical wisdom 
of Charles Sumner's statesmanship. 

" By their fruits ye shall know them" is a rule of 
the highest wisdom and authority, and as applicable 
to statesmen as to other men. Tried by this standard, 
Mr. Sumner is exalted among statesmen. A striking 
instance and contrast in our own history is in point. 

SUMNER AND CALHOUN. 

A year before Charles Sumner's election to the 
Senate, John C. Calhoun died at Washington, after a 
long and distinguished career in the councils of the 
nation. Like Sumner he died a senator, and the 
greatest from his section. These two men will stand 



186 CHARLES SUMNER. 

in our history as the fittest and ablest representatives 
of the North and the South, of freedom and slavery. 
They were both men of strong will, of unblemished 
private life, and of commanding talents. As the sun 
of the great South Carolinian set, that of the North- 
ern statesman arose. Massachusetts and South Caro- 
lina, the States that ''shoulder to shoulder went 
through the Revolution, and felt the strong arm of 
Washington lean on them for support," furnished 
these two statesmen to the Union. As slavery and 
the South found in Calhoun their ablest and most 
tireless senatorial advocate and statesman, so freedom 
and the North at last had in Sumner, in the same 
great arena, their most persistent and powerful 
champion. The one spent his life and his great 
talents defending human bondage and warring upon 
freedom ; the other as freely gave his great acquire- 
ments and noble faculties to the cause of freedom 
and the slave. 

Behold now how time and history have dealt with 
the two champions and the opposing systems which 
they defended. The doctrines of Calhoun ripened 
into secession and civil war to overthrow the gov- 
ernment ; those of Sumner into emancipation, a 
restored Union, and civil rights to all. The grim 
spirits of slavery and treason, of war and bloodshed, 
rise up at the name of Calhoun ; upon the memory 
of Sumner, freedom and white-winged peace shed 
their sweetest benedictions, and millions of broken 
fetters are his trophies of victory. 

MR. SUMNER AS AN ORATOR. 

Plutarch, in comparing the two great orators of 
antiquity, says : " It is necessary, indeed, for a states- 



CHARLES SUMNER. 187 

man to have the advantage of elotjuence." This 
advantage Mr. Sumner possessed in a very eminent 
degree. He was indeed an orator of a classic type 
and of the most massive kind. Few, if any, modern 
parliamentary speakers have excelled him. Nature 
had done much for him in this respect. His personal 
presence was noble and commanding, and his voice, 
a deep and mellow bass, was sonorous and far-re- 
sounding. His temperament was not electrical, and 
hence he was never fiery or rapid in delivery, but 
spoke with judicial gravity, with full articulation, and 
with measured, impressive periods. He had the 
majesty and weight of manner which give such dig- 
nity to senatorial eloquence. It is a singular co- 
incident that in these respects he more nearly 
resembled his great predecessor in the Senate, 
Daniel Webster, than any other modern orator. 

His style partook of the qualities of his moral 
nature and of his personal presence. It was lofty in 
thought and purpose, and stately in utterance. Not 
always flexible, and never diffuse ; sometimes, indeed, 
seeming stiff and lacking in euphony, it was always 
pitched upon a lofty key, and rose, in volume and 
grandeur, to the close. Here he most resembled 
Milton, to whom, indeed, there was still further 
resemblance in the grave and majestic expression of 
countenance, in vast and affluent scholarship, in 
lofty and severe integrity of life, and in unswerving 
devotion to the rights of man. It was a style 
admirably suited to the great themes of state which 
it became his mission to discuss. He was the advo- 
cate of liberty, humanity, justice, and nationality, 
and he needed the highest dignity and power of 
speech to plead for these. 



188 CHARLES SUMNER. 

Mr. Sumner was not distinguished or dexterous in 
off-hand debate, but chose rather to advocate or 
oppose measures in full and well-considered speeches. 
In this respect he was peculiar, and, I think, unap- 
proachable by any other statesman or orator we 
have ever had. His great speeches were so thor- 
oughly prepared that they were exhaustive of the 
question and literally unanswerable. History, litera- 
ture, learning, logic, and eloquence were gathered 
with a mighty sweep from far and near, and molded 
and welded in a great volume of argument, demon- 
stration, and persuasion which was absolutely over- 
whelming and irresistible. No modern orator ever 
excelled him in this cumulative power. It is a 
singular fact that while his greatest senatorial efforts 
always provoked fierce opposition, and called forth 
unmeasured personal denunciation, they were never 
answered. The orator was assailed with angry 
words, and even personal violence, but his speech 
was not replied to. And this was simply for the 
reason that it could not be replied to. An argu- 
ment, founded on the truths of nature and history, 
with the adjuncts of all reason, learning, and litera- 
ture to support and fortify it, and fused and kindled 
by a sublime moral enthusiasm into a blaze of 
majestic eloquence, it was a power which could not 
be resisted in kind. 

SUMNER AND EDMUND BURKE. 

As a parliamentary orator, besides Webster, 
Mr. Sumner nearest resembled Edmund Burke. 
The men were not unlike in many respects, and the 
subjects upon which they spoke were not altogether 



CHARLES SUMNER. 189 

dissimilar. Both had great resources of statesman- 
ship, learning, and eloquence ; both spoke upon full 
preparation and exhaustively, and both denounced 
great public wrongs. Sumner excelled Burke in 
delivery as much as he was excelled by the latter in 
style, which, for purity and richness of language and 
imperial sweep of imagination, is still the study of 
rhetoricians and the model of statesmen. The speech 
of Burke in the British House of Lords, against the 
oppressor of India, and the speech of Sumner in the 
American Senate, on the barbarism of slavery, are 
the two most remarkable and powerful philippics in 
the English language, and they will be read and 
ranked in times to come with their great originals, 
the orations of Cicero against Cataline and Verres, 
and of Demosthenes against Philip. As Edmund 
Burke is the ornament and glory of English states- 
manship and eloquence, so, I think, will Charles 
Sumner hereafter be of American, for he had the 
high themes and the great purpose which will give 
his eloquence immortality. 

MR. SUMNER NOT A POPULAR FAVORITE. 

Mr. Sumner was never, in his lifetime, a popular pub- 
lic man. He had noneof the artsof the demagogue, and 
his aims were always high above the multitude. It is 
one of the penalties of real greatness to be misunder- 
stood and opposed. He was a statesman who followed 
the truth with a martyr's devotion, and he frequently 
received the martyr's reward. Men of lofty aims 
and uncompromising ways always make enemies. It 
will not answer to say that this is their fault. The 
multitude in all ages have stoned their prophets and 



190 CHARLES SUMNER. 

crucified their benefactors. Even the noblest and 
greatest being that ever appeared in human form 
was surrounded at every step of his beneficent mis- 
sion by enemies, who finally took his life. Mr. 
Sumner never asked favors of the people, and always 
opposed them when they were wrong. In this, of 
course, he was their truest friend, because he served 
their best interests. For many years the purest and 
greatest of our statesmen, there was no time when 
his name could have commanded any considerable or 
formidable support for president, either in his party 
or before the people. Not that the country did not 
need such men as he was for that office, but his great, 
pure life was a constant rebuke to the average small- 
ness and meanness of politicians, and his courageous 
denunciation of popular wrongs had offended the 
easy-going complacency of the people. But, happily, 
he never sought the presidency, like so many of our 
public men, and he therefore suffered no disappoint- 
ment. 

I do not mean to say that a popular statesman or 
public man is always or necessarily unworthy. Not- 
able instances in our own history would prove the 
contrary. A good man may represent or reflect the 
people in their best and highest moods and be popu- 
lar with them, while at the same time he serves his 
country and secures an honorable name in history. 
In this way Lincoln was popular, because, a man of 
the people himself, he caught their inspiration and 
reflected their will at a great crisis, when they 
were at the white moral heat of revolution. But 
Sumner led the way to national reform through 
popular opposition, prejudice, and clamor, and 



CHARLES SUMNER. 191 

spent his life in the advocacy of unpopular causes 
and ideas. Hence he could never be a favorite with 
the masses. Clay and Douglas were great party 
leaders, and were idolized by their followers. They 
marshaled their forces like skilful generals, and 
fought the battles of their day on the field of national 
politics. But they took the people as they found 
them, and left them little better. Sumner, on the 
contrary, was not a politician or a leader of a party, 
but the bold proclaimer and champion of unpopular 
and unwelcome political truths ; and he finally left 
the people, who reluctantly followed him, upon a 
higher plane of political knowledge, equality, and 
liberty. 

HIS ABILITIES OF THE FIRST ORDER. 

The natural endowments of Mr. Sumner were 
large, and even in this respect I think he was entitled 
to rank in the first order of statespien. If he had not 
the vast brain and the intellectual afi[iuence of Web- 
ster, he nevertheless was gifted by nature with a 
mind of uncommon strength, having the capacity for 
continued labor and acquisTtion, and the blended 
moral and intellectual insight to direct it to great 
and noble achievement. In learning, whether use- 
ful or ornamental, in the knowledge of history and 
literature, so important to a statesman, he greatly 
excelled Webster, while in moral character and pur- 
pose he rose far above him. It is difficult to separate 
and lay apart the qualities of such a mind as Mr. 
Sumner's, and to say how much was natural endow- 
ment and how much was acquired, for the very 
capacity to acquire, and the moral inspiration to 



192 CHARLES SUMNER. 

guide and direct the intellectual effort were equally 
the original gifts of nature. It is, therefore, useless 
to speculate in a matter of this kind. Enough that 
the full assemblage of qualities and graces which 
made up the entire of Mr. Sumner's moral and intel- 
lectual character were ample to entitle him to rank 
in the first order of publicists and statesmen. Wash- 
ington, in spite of the celebrated aphorism of Henry 
Lee, has been excelled in war and peace alike, but 
never, perhaps, in the wonderful poise and balance 
of faculties which have made him one of the few 
traditional and legendary heroes of history. 

Men of conspicuous lives, who play important 
parts upon the world's stage, whether warriors, 
rulers, or statesmen, must be judged by what they do 
and what they are, and the measure of their great- 
ness must be the impression which their work and 
influence makes upon their times, their nation, and 
the world. Tried by this standard, Charles Sumner 
must be admitted into the immortal company of the 
worlds great men. He was great as a scholar, 
orator, and statesman, and exceptionally great in the 
moral qualities which Re brought to statesmanship. 
History will be searched in vain to find another 
statesman who so steadily, unswervingly, and con- 
sistently devoted his public life to truth, justice, and 
freedom, and who sought with such zeal and courage 
to bring the sermon on the mount into the field of 
legislation and government. He was called " the 
senator with a conscience," a term which truly 
described him, while it indicated the contrast be- 
tween him and so many other of our public men. 
Another title which in his last years, especially, he 



CHARLES SUMNER. 19:^) 

bore unquestioned, was that of '" the great senator." 
How much that expresses, and how true it was ! 
He towered intellectually above the dull common- 
place of the Senate in these later, degenerate days 
like the lofty peak of Teneriffe ; or like Mont Blanc, 
in the whiteness and majesty of his character. 

HIS MORAL GREATNESS. 

It is, indeed, in the moral greatness of his life that 
Charles Sumner surpasses all our statesmen. This 
will constitute his chief distinction in history, for 
other statesmen have been learned, able, and elo- 
quent ; but not one of all the great names our 
country can boast has so exalted statesmanship 
above the mere policies and expedients of to-day 
into the grand, clear region of eternal and immortal 
principles. Liberty and the equality of all men 
before the law, — these were his guiding stars and 
the rule of his life. 

HIS FIRMNESS AND CONSTANCY. 

From these lofty purposes nothing could tempt 
him, nothing could swerve him. In the long anti- 
slavery struggle, his firmness and constancy never 
changed. What Martin Luther was at the Diet of 
Worms, Charles Sumner was, three hundred years 
later, in the American Congress. He stood as 
bravely and firmly for personal and political liberty 
as Luther did for liberty of conscience. Wendell 
Phillips once said that John Ouincy Adams carried 
Plymouth Rock to Washington. This was even 
truer of Sumner. A son of the Puritans himself, he 
stood for the truth as firm set and unshaken as 
Plymouth Rock, always and everywhere. When the 
13 



194 CHARLES SUMNER. 

hearts of other men grew faint in the long contest, 
when the clouds gathered and the heavens were 
dark above them, and there was talk of compromise 
or surrender, the great leader never faltered or 
turned aside, but kept straight on, his face to the 
foe, and his clarion voice ringing out words of lofty 
encouragement. He was indeed — 

"Constant as the northern star, 
Of whose true-fixed and resting quality 
There is no fellow in the firmament." 

HIS INTEGRITY. 

Need I speak of his integrity ? In an age of venality 
in politics and of corruption among public men, he 
stood so conspicuously white in his character that 
no breath of suspicion ever for a moment even rested 
upon his name. What praise was that ! All around 
him in these few, sad years which have gone, were 
the wrecks of character, his fellows in the public 
service broken, dishonored, and disgraced, while he 
stood like a rock in the midst of the sea, giving his 
countrymen assurance still that all honor and integ- 
rity were not gone from the high places of the 
Republic. Alas, that he is now gone from the place 
where his example is so much needed ! 

HIS MORAL COURAGE. 
And then, what lofty moral courage he had ! Here 
he was sublime. We have seen that in his young 
manhood he put all the prospects of his life and of 
his ambition in peril for the cause of the slave. This 
was but the beginning, the dedication to a work 
which demanded of him ever after to face opposition, 
obloquy, slander, danger, and death itself. O, it 



CHARLES SUMNER. 195 

has been easy in these recent years to be antislavery, 
to go with the majority, to swim with the tide, when 
the North has been all aroused, and when antislavery 
has been the passport to public office and public favor. 
But think what it was in the dark days when Charles 
Sumner put on his armor, and went forth like David 
against Goliath, to battle against the colossal power 
of slavery. 

Nor was it always or alone that he had enemies to 
face, as he did in the first half of his public life ; in 
these later years he frequently had to brave the 
opposition and frowns of friends. To a lofty and 
sensitive soul this is the hardest of all. But even 
this could not daunt him. He met their cruel wrong 
and ingratitude as he had the rage of enemies. 

I have no language to express my admiration for 
such courage as Charles Sumner displayed through- 
out his entire public career. It was as rare as it was 
grand and heroic. It was the chivalry of statesman- 
ship. The courage of war and the battlefield pales 
before it. What is mere physical bravery in com- 
parison ! To charge on serried lines or flaming 
batteries, in the shock and fury of battle, when the 
blood is mounting and hot with the fiery contagion of 
thousands all around, and the splendid intoxication 
of war drowns all thought of danger — this is the 
physical courage of the soldier, which the world in 
all ages has admired and applauded. But to stand 
alone, if need be, against the world, for a cause or an 
idea ; to endure the sneers, the scorn, and the scoffs of 
men ; to put reputation, character, prospects, all at 
hazard for a principle — this is moral courage, this is 
courage which is godlike and sublime ! 



196 CHARLES SUMNER. 

HIS DEATH — THE UNIVERSAL TRIBUTE — WHO SHALL 
TAKE HIS PLACE? 

The grand old patriot and statesman is at rest now. 
No more strife and opposition, no more weariness 
and pain, no more cruel wrong and ingratitude. He 
died as he had lived. There was no weakness, no 
obscuration of intellect, no unmanly fear of death. 
His sun went down like the full orb of day, with no 
clouds about its setting. How fitting here the noble 
passage from Milton : — 

" Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail 
Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt, 
Dispraise or blame, nothing but well and fair. 
And what may quiet us in a death so noble." 

All men honor his memory. The same fickle and 
ungrateful people who kill their prophets, build 
sepulchers and monuments to them after they are 
dead. And so in all the land, as in the whole wide 
circuit of civilization, nothing but good is said of the 
great senator. All races and sections speak with the 
same voice. Next to the noble tribute of that 
brilliant senator who was the great man's friend and 
associate, and who, though of foreign birth, speaks 
our language with such marvelous fluency and grace, 
there have been laid upon the statesman's bier no 
finer offerings than from those two men of the South, 
one the representative of the emancipated slave, the 
other of the once lordly slave master. Happy co- 
incidence ! Auspicious omen ! Thus the wide gap 
closes between master and slave, between North and 
South ; thus is the problem of statesmanship solved, 
and thus does a great life-work for common country 



CHARLES SUMNER. 197 

and common humanity meet with its sure and 
glorious reward. 

Thank God, there is appreciation and honor yet in 
America for a great, true man. As truly now can it 
be said as when Daniel VV^ebster said it of Adams 
and Jefferson, that " the tears which are shed, and 
the honors which are paid, when the defenders of the 
Republic die, give hope that the Republic itself may 
be immortal." Well may the people mourn. Just 
as we are approaching our one hundredth national 
anniversary, our greatest and noblest statesman, the 
most august and commanding presence in our national 
councils, is removed. Where shall we look for his 
like .'' The strong tower is indeed fallen. As our 
eyes sweep inquiringly around the political horizon, 
we see no one to take his place. And well may 
Massachusetts, once the proud mother of so many 
statesmen, weep for her buried greatness. Her long 
and illustrious line in the national Senate ends with 
him, her purest and her greatest, the light and glory 
of whose splendid name and services only make more 
palpable and dark the void which is left. 

HIS PLACE L\ HISTORY. 

Charles Sumner's place in history is secure. Allied 
to immortal principles, to conscience, and to God, his 
fame will live as long as the records of civilization 
shall endure. Liberty will enroll him with her 
immortal advocates and defenders ; Eloquence will 
point to him as one of her noblest orators ; and 
Humanity will enshrine him with her great bene- 
factors. He will be the hero statesman ; and as the 
noble knight of liberty he will ride down the centuries. 



198 CHARLES SUMNER. 

For he went forth with more than knightly courage, 
not to rescue from heathen profanation the earthly 
sepulcher where the Lord's body lay, but to save 
from the profaner hands of tyranny and oppression 
millions of human souls [in ^whom the Lord's spirit 
now dwells. 

As the statesman who led in the great effort which 
finally rid the Republic of the New World from the 
curse of African slavery, he will keep company in 
history with Washington the founder and Lincoln 
the liberator ; and in after-ages when accurate his- 
torical narrative begins to blend with legend and 
tradition, a halo will surround his name like that 
which glorifies the names of Sidney and Hampden, 
of Bayard and Bozzaris, and other illustrious defend- 
ers and martyrs of country and liberty. Thus do 
such lofty souls become the guardian angels of their 
country, as the traditionary fame of William Tell 
hovers like a protecting aegis above the mountains of 
Switzerland. And such is the transfiguration which 
God vouchsafes to his great ones who help to lift 
humanity up to knowledge, to liberty, and to Him. 



FUNERAL ORATION. 



My Friends : You have assembled here as neigh- 
bors and fellow citizens to pay the last honors to the 
dead. It was the dying wish of Dr. Thayer that I, 
the friend of many years, should speak at his funeral. 
However much I might feel like shrinking from the 
duty which this request imposes, however delicate 
and embarrassing the position in which it places me, 
I can not disregard or disobey it. I remember that 
in the years that have gone that voice which is now 
hushed in death has many times bid me come to 
Battle Creek to speak for those great causes in 
which this large-hearted man took such deep inter- 
est, — for the cause of the slave, of the country, of the 
soldier, — ^and now that his voice comes to me with 
the solemnity of death, and from the land beyond, it 
must be obeyed. 

The thought that was in his mind in giving this di- 
rection was not one of mere singularity or eccentricity, 
much less, I am sure, one of needless antagonism to 
the religious customs and observances of his fellow- 
men; for Dr. Thayer was one of nature's gentlemen, 
and a man of broad and catholic spirit. I have no 
doubt that the request was largely due to his over- 
generous partiality for me, evinced for so many years, 
and from his desire that these ceremonies should be 
simple and unostentatious. And so I shall speak to 
you, as I think he would desire me, a few sincere 

1 Remarks of Hon. Chas. S. May, at the funeral of Dr. S. B. Thayer, 
of Battle Creek, Mich., Sept. — , 1874. From the report in the Battle 
Creek Daily Journal, 

199 



200 FUNERAL ORATION. 

and unstudied words, springing out of this occasion, 
and fit for his memory. 

Death is a solemn, but at the same time a natural, 
event. It is not a calamity that falls out of the 
skies ; it is not a violation or a breaking of the nat- 
ural law, but rather a fulfilment of it. It is, besides, 
a necessity in the physical order of the universe. 
The generations which have done their work and 
passed away could not now find room to exist upon 
the earth. And so I think, in the light of this great 
truth, that we surround this whole subject of death 
with too much gloom and darkness. When we pass 
from this world to the next, in obedience to this 
great law, we do not pass out from the care and 
protection and mercy of God. We shall be his chil- 
dren there as here, and the transition to the life be- 
yond is irradiated with light and promise and hope. 
What one of us would live always upon the earth ? 
Who does not feel that death is often a relief.'* In old 
age, and frequently in the midst of great suffering or 
trial, men long to lie down in the shadows of death 
and the grave as the tired infant, when the night 
comes, sinks to sleep in its mother's arms. 

So our friend here has done his work and passed on 
— gone in the golden prime of his faculties, with his 
mind undimmed, with reason unclouded, after great 
and protracted suffering, it is true, but suffering re- 
lieved by medical aid and assuaged and alleviated by 
loving and tender hands and by all the resources of 
affection. As I sat by his bedside the last time, 
speaking of his pain and suffering, he expressed a 
wish to go, and added, " I am not afraid to die." At 
the same time he spoke in words of tenderest recog- 



FUNERAL ORATION. 201 

nition of the loving' ministries of wife and daughters. 
An hour or two before the close, as I am told, there 
came to him that clear and holy calm which God so 
often sends to the dying ; when the physical pain 
and agony ceased ; when his countenance was lit up 
by the light of another world, and he seemed to 
behold visions unseen to those around his bed, — 
perhaps the faces of those who had gone before, — 
and those large, expressive eyes beamed recognition 
of family and friends ; while, as the power of speech 
failed him in his great physical weakness, amid the 
broken utterances of private affection were caught 
the accents of the Lord's prayer. And thus he 
passed into the light beyond. 

The man we bury to-day was a well-known citizen, 
an old resident of this city, one of the pioneers, 
indeed, of this region. His name was known all 
through our State and even beyond its borders. He 
stood high, and was an honored leader in his profes- 
sion. It is not my purpose here to speak of the 
details of his history. That I see has already been, 
at least partially done by your daily paper, and it is 
unnecessary that I should give you any biographical 
sketch. You knew Dr. Thayer and his history in 
your midst. He acted always a prominent part, 
and was as open as the day. And many of you 
knew him in that most sacred and tender relation of 
a physician in your homes. 

But I wish rather to use the few moments I have 
here in speaking of some of those elements of char- 
acter which went to make the man what he was and 
what we knew him to be. 

And first let me say that Dr. Thayer was a man of 



202 FUNERAL ORATION. 

much more than ordinary intellectual ability among 
professional men. He had a mind which was at the 
same time broad and acute. No man could converse 
with him for any length of time upon an abstruse 
subject, or one requiring power of thought or analy- 
sis, without being made aware that he was a man 
possessed of very much more than ordinary mental 
grasp and resources. And his natural faculties had 
been improved by much thought and reading. He 
was an intelligent man, a man of intellectual culture. 
He was skilful and well read in his profession, but 
his mind was not confined to its limits, but broad- 
ened out into subjects and investigations beyond it. 
Though not a public speaker, he was ready and able 
with his pen, and could advocate his views with 
strong newspaper articles, which he frequently did. 
He was a man of marked and distinguished social 
qualities. Warm-hearted, generous to a fault, he 
was always open, kindly, and genial. His sympa- 
thies were large, and he could never do or say too 
much for a cause or a friend. We shall never forget 
the warm grasp of his hand, the friendly, social con- 
verse, or the generous and large-hearted confidence 
which he gave always to his friends. 

But more than his intellectual qualities, more than 
his social qualities, were some of the strong moral 
attributes which went to make up his character. 

I want to speak to you of his love of justice, of his 
moral courage. This was a distinguishing quality of 
Dr. Thayer. He was known for this wherever he 
lived and throughout his entire history. Away back 
in the days of my boyhood, as long ago as I can 
remember, he was already prominent in that early 



FUNERAL ORATION. 203 

band of antislavery men who constituted the van- 
guard of what has since proved a great and trium- 
phant political movement. His early manhood was 
given to that cause, against all fear of danger, against 
all obloquy and reproach of men. My venerable 
friend who sits before me, himself a pioneer in the 
great reform (Hon. Erastus Hussey), will recall Dr. 
Thayer as one of his co-laborers in the struggles of 
those early times. His sense of justice was touched 
by the wrongs of the slave, his sympathy was 
aroused ; he did not stop to count the cost, but had 
the courage to take his stand. And so he was on 
other great questions and reforms. He was always 
in the advance, an early friend of temperance as well 
as antislavery. 

This manly independence and fidelity to his con- 
victions shone out always in his character. In this 
great quality which is so much needed in these 
times, in public and private life, he was a shining 
example. Whatever he believed to be right he fol- 
lowed with courage and enthusiasm and hopeful zeal. 
He followed his convictions into that early move- 
ment for abolition when it was weak and despised, 
and recently, in his later life, he followed his convic- 
tions of political duty when they took him out of his 
party in the day when it was great and powerful. 
Educated in the old school of medicine, he followed 
his convictions into the new, and became for many 
years the chief and most active champion in an 
effort to secure for that new school what he deemed 
with all his soul to be its fundamental right, — a rec- 
ognition in the University of our State. I do not 
speak of these things in any spirit of controversy, 



204 FUNERAL ORATION, 

not even to say that he was right always, but to 
show you the character of the man. 

Nor should I fail in this connection to speak of his 
patriotism. When our great Civil war came, Dr. 
Thayer, although he had reached an age when he 
might have claimed exemption from its trials and 
dangers, went cheerfully to the field, taking with him 
his two sons and his son-in-law, greatly impairing 
his own constitution in his three years of service, 
and leaving two of the brave young men of his 
household sacrifices upon the altar of the country. 

And now, standing by this man's bier, what shall 
I give you, fellow citizens, as the lesson of his life ? 
In my judgment it clearly is this — the value of char- 
acter. I have said that Dr. Thayer was brave, and 
true, and generous ; that he loved justice and hated 
wrong ; that he was a patriot and a man of moral 
courage ; that he was true always to his convictions. 
Do you fully realize what praise this is to speak 
above the dead man's bier .'^ And do I not speak 
truly .'' Can I not appeal to this large assemblage of 
his neighbors and fellow citizens to witness to the 
truth of what I say .-' 

The value of character ! That is the true riches ; 
all else is dross. My friends, we may fail in the ob- 
jects of our striving and our ambition. We may fail 
to gather the riches of this world, or when gathered 
they may take wings and fly away. We may fail in 
the struggle for power and fame. Fame itself is a 
vapor ; to-day a man's name may fill all the land, 
to-morrow it may be forgotten. 

But we do not fail when we secure the elements ot 
a noble character. That is something that inheres 



FUNERAL ORATION. 205 

in the man, that can not be taken from him, that is 
above the power of any accident ; something which 
he may enjoy here and take with him into the land 
beyond ; something which is founded on the solid 
rock of truth ; something; which is the truth itself 

This man we honor to-day left no large worldly 
possessions filched from the poor, or won even in the 
honest struggles of business or commerce. But he 
has left a manly character and an influence for good 
to live after him. He has been a true man, and he 
is to-day receiving the benediction, " Whenever ye 
have done it unto these suffering men, or these good 
causes, ye have done it unto me and to my truth.'" 

And this is a legacy and a consolation for this 
stricken family and these sorrowing friends. Believe 
me, it is well with such a man. His work is done, it 
is well done, and we leave him in the hands of the 
the all-merciful Father. God will take care of him. 
A little while and you will go to meet him. In that 
land of radiant beauty and unspeakable felicity these 
broken ties of affection shall be reunited. It may 
not be the land which the Christian imagination for 
so many centuries has painted ; the golden pave- 
ments, the harp, and the crown may not be there, 
but it will be, I am sure, a land full of sunshine and 
beauty and of the immeasurable possibilities of hap- 
piness and of progress which lie within the power 
and the sToodness of God. 



ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME 
COURT, AT LANSING, MICH.' 



Maj' It Please the Court : 

This is a motion for a juandavius, and presents but 
a single main question, around which the whole dis- 
cussion must turn. Have the people of the State of 
Michigan the right of direction and control in the 
matter of the creation of a chair or professorship of 
homeopathy in the medical department of the Uni- 
versity ? I say the people of Michigan, for we shall 
see further on in the argument that the Legislature 
is but the voice and organ of the people. 

There is no question that originally, in the organ- 
ization of the University, this right was possessed. 
Has it ever been relinquished or abrogated .? It is 
claimed that it has been ; that it has been delegated 
by the constitution of 1850 to other hands, and that 
it can now be exercised only by a board of regents. 
The people, through the Legislatures of 1855, 1867, 
and 1873, have still insisted upon the right ; but their 
will is resisted, and it is contended that the succes- 
sive acts of these Legislatures are unconstitutional 
and of no effect. 

This proceeding arises immediately from the act of 
1873, which, in effect, is a solemn legislative command 
upon the regents to obey the act of 1855, which pro- 



iln the case of the People ex. rel. Isaac Marston, Attorney General, 
vs. the Regents of the University of Michigan. Motion for Manda- 
mus. Mr. May as counsel for the People, associated with Judge Kdwin 
Lawrence. Judge C. B. Grant, Ex. -Gov. Felch, and Hon. C. I. Walker 
appeared for the Regents. October Term, 1874, 
206 



ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 207 

vided " that there shall always be at least one pro- 
fessor of homeopathy in the department of medicine." 
We now ask the aid of this court to compel the exe- 
cution of this command. 

This, I submit, your honors, is a fair statement ot 
the question in its length and breadth, and I propose 
to argue it upon this broad basis, and to show, if I 
can, that the power to direct in a matter so funda- 
mental and vital to the University, has not been 
abrogated or abandoned, but still belongs to the peo- 
ple, by first right, to be exercised by them, through 
the Legislature, for the good of an institution which 
is their own offspring. 

I. 
THE RIGHT PROVIDED FOR AND MADE A PART OF 

THE ORIGINAL CONTRACT BETWEEN THE STATE 

AND THE GENERAL GOVERNMENT. 

At the threshold of this discussion I call the atten- 
tion of the court to the fundamental and controlling 
fact that the original grant of lands for the Uni- 
versity by the general government was made and 
accepted on the express condition that this right 
should remain with the people, and be exercised by 
them through the Legislature. 

There can be no mistake here. This is the lan- 
guage of the grant : " That the seventy-two sections 
of land set apart and reserved for the support of a 
University are hereby granted and conveyed to the 
State, to be appropriated solely to the use and sup- 
port of such University, in siicJi manner as the Legis- 
lature may prescribe!' 1 Comp. Laws, p. 38. 

I say the grant was upon this express condition. 



208 ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 

because the history of the transaction shows that it 
was in the form of a proposition from Congress, the 
acceptance of which, with others named, was made 
a condition to the admission of the State into the 
Union. This proposition was formally accepted by 
the State, and the State was thereupon duly admitted. 
1 Comp. Laws, pp. 42-44. 

The effect of this is, I contend, that the State took 
the grant subject to this clear qualification upon its 
face, and thereby solemnly stipulated to use it in the 
manner provided. 

But whether we call this a contract upon condition 
or a trust, I insist that it has all the force and sanc- 
tion of public law, and is binding upon the State and 
all its courts and officers. 

Public acts are part of the general law of the land, 
and courts will take notice of them and all their 
conditions aud provisions. 1 Kent Com., 460. 

This was no mere contract between private indi- 
viduals upon an inconsequential matter, but it was a 
solemn treaty between the government of the United 
States and a Territory which was seeking admission 
into the Union, and its subject-matter was one in 
which both parties had a deep solicitude and a con- 
tinuing interest. While it has all the elements of a 
contract between man and man, it rises in its dignity 
to a question of fundamental law between States, and 
imposes upon the State of Michigan an obligation 
commensurate with the trust which the general gov- 
ernment has placed in its hands. 

In order fully to understand the force of the lan- 
guage of the grant, let us look a moment to the 
situation of the parties at the time it was made. 



ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 209 

We may thus see why it was that this power in 
question here was lodged with the Legislature. 

The general government as early as 1804 had made 
a reservation of lands for this University. 2 U. S. 
Stat., p. 270. 

In 1820 Congress made this reservation final, and 
"set apart and reserved from sale" the lands men- 
tioned, " for the use and support of an University in 
the Territory aforesaid, and for no other use or pur- 
pose whatsoever." 4 Ibid., 188. 

Then in 1836 Congress, by an ordinance, made the 
proposition to cede the lands that had been set apart 
and reserved by the former acts, upon the condition 
and subject to the qualifications which I have already 
quoted. 

At this time Michigan was seeking admission into 
the Union, and this proposition, together with the 
question of boundaries and some others of minor 
importance, was submitted to her Legislature, with 
the express notification that upon their acceptance 
or rejection would depend the question of her admis- 
sion. This was after Congress had rejected certain 
other propositions which had been made on behalf ol 
the Territory by the convention sitting at Detroit. 
I do not give all the history, but this is enough for 
our purpose. 

Here, then, your honors, we have the situation of 
the parties to this most important and far-reaching 
compact. The general government, looking to the 
young political community which was knocking at 
its doors for equal participation in the privileges and 
benefits of the Union, said, in effect : " Here is this 
land, a part of our broad domain within your borders 

14 



210 ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 

which we have heretofore reserved for the support of 
a University. If we will now admit you, will you 
take it and use it for its noble purpose as we shall 
direct ? If you so promise, then you shall be 
admitted into the family of States. 

And the young State answered by solemn ordi- 
nance : ''We accept the trust, and we so promise to 
use it." 

The grant of lands thus made and accepted was to 
the people of Michigan as a political State ; the 
acceptance was in their name and behalf, and the 
injunction was to appropriate it " solely to the use 
and support of a University, in such manner as the 
Legislature may prescribe." 

The Legislature only, in this sense, can represent 
the people ; and this, we claim, was a continuing 
trust which was placed in the hands of the Legislature. 

We can not suppose, your honors, that this lan- 
guage was accidental or without purpose. In a 
matter of such grave importance it was natural that 
the general government should desire and provide 
that this endowment to the people of the State of 
Michigan should remain in their hands and control 
forever, not to be given away, abandoned, or dele- 
gated to any board, council, or synod, but subject 
primarily to their will, acting upon and through the 
Legislature, its only legitimate and proper exponent 
under our system of government. 

Here we have, then, as the sum of these important 
and far-reaching public acts, the wise provision of 
the parent government and the filial promise and 
undertaking of the infant State. They were build- 
ing a political edifice to last for all time, and they 



ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 211 

were laying its timbers upon the solid and enduring 
foundations of popular education, the only adequate 
safeguard of republican institutions. 

I repeat that such a compact has all the binding 
force and sanction of public law, and will be so 
regarded and respected by this court. The good 
faith of the State is pledged in this matter, and this 
court, which enforces the private promises of indi- 
viduals, will see to it that the solemn undertaking ot 
the State itself be not disregarded. 

The grant from the government must be construed 
beneficially for the grantee, the State, according to 
the expressed intent and the common understanding 
of its language. This is the rule for the construc- 
tion of grants of this kind, and I submit that this 
would require that the State, as a political sover- 
eignty, should have the benefit of control over the 
University through its Legislature, in compliance 
with the plain terms of the grant. 1 Kent's Com., 
460, Note G. 

II. 

THE RIGHT EXERCISED WITHOUT QUESTION UP TO 
THE ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION OF 1850. 

May it please the court, the position which I take 
here is fortified by the action of the State in its deal- 
ing with the University. The State accepted the 
grant with its conditions, and exercised full control 
over the University, through the Legislature, up to 
the adoption of the constitution of 1850. In all this 
time the right, though fully asserted upon the statute 
book, was never questioned. 



212 ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 

Let me glance here at the history as found in 
the act of March 18, 1887, passed so soon after the 
admission of the State into the Union, an act pro- 
viding for the first organization of the University, 
and mapping out its several departments. Here we 
shall find the right fully asserted. And this asser- 
tion and exercise of the right becomes the more sig- 
nificant when we see that this very act starts out 
with the creation of a board of regents, to whom 
the immediate supervision of the University was 
entrusted, and who were then and there clothed with 
substantially the same powers as those afterward 
conferred by the constitution of 1850. Rev. Stat., 
1846, chap. 57. 

After this has been done, and the board has been 
constituted a body corporate to represent the Uni- 
versity, the act goes on to provide, in enumerating 
the powers of the board, among other things, that 
they " shall have power, and it shall be their duty, to 
elect a chancellor and appoint the prescribed num- 
ber of professors." 

" Prescribed " by whom .^ Clearly by the Legisla- 
ture, and a power exercised in this very act. Nor 
was it intended that this restriction and limitation of 
the power of the board should stop here, as we shall 
presently see. 

For the act then goes on to lay out the several 
departments of the University, to establish the pro- 
fessorships in each, and, directing the regents in the 
matter of arranging the professorships in the first 
organization and increasing their number afterwards, 
it uses this emphatic language : — 

" Provided always, that no NEW professorships 



ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 213 
shall be established WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF THE 

Legislature." 

Could anything be clearer or stronger than this .^ 
Here we have a perpetual reservation by the legisla- 
tive power of the right to establish new professor- 
ships in the University, and a solemn injunction and 
warning to the regents to abstain from its exercise. 
And this is the very question we have here. 

The regents now claim to have the sole right to 
establish iic-u> professorships ; and the point I make 
upon this act of 1837 is, that it clearly and positively 
shows that such was not the understanding at the 
outset. 

It must be remembered that this act was in force up 
to the adoption of the constitution of 18o() ; that the 
University was operated under it, and the regents 
were controlled by it during all that time. Hence 
we have here the very best evidence of the original 
Legislative intent and construction upon the subject. 

And as the result of it all, we see the Legislature, 
as the immediate representative of the people, ac- 
cepting the grant, establishing the University, creat- 
ingthe board of regents, giving them numerous minute 
directions as to their duties, and expressly limiting 
their powers in the matter which we have now before 
us, and retaining full control over the University. 

It was here the Legislature, which, acting all the 
while for the people in the execution of the trust im- 
posed by the grant, created and gave the breath of 
life to this board of regents, who were to be but its 
stewards and servants, with no more power or au- 
thority than they derived from this very act. And 
the regents so understood it then, and continued to 



214 ARf.UMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 

discharge their duties as marked out for them by the 
Legislature, obeying in all things, great and small, 
the mandates of the superior power. 

Certainly, nothing more is needed to show that 
this right of Legislative control over the University 
was exercised unquestioned up to LS50. Has any 
new rule been adopted since ? This now becomes an 
important inquiry, and its answer is decisive of this 
case. 

IIL 

THE CONSTITUTION OF 1850 ^ NO NEW RULE 
ADOPTED. 

Coming now to the constitution of 1850, 1 contend, 
your honors, that no new rule on this subject was 
adopted by that instrument. I will not stop here to 
discuss the validity and effect of such a rule if it could 
clearly be found in the constitution, — in plain oppo- 
sition, as I insist it would be, to the clear and ex- 
press understanding between the State and the gen- 
eral government, — for happily no such radical 
change can be discovered in it ; no evidence of any 
intention on the part of its framers to inaugurate a 
new and different rule for the government of the 
University. 

The only material change made by the constitu- 
tion of 1850 with reference to the University was in 
the clause making the regents elective instead of 
appointable, as they had previously been ; that is all. 
Section ^), art. 13. 

It is evident from the face of the instrument that 
the framers of the constitution of 1850 took the 
regents as they found them, with their powers and 



ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 215 

functions as defined, and then simply made them 
elective by the people, without intending to add to 
or take from their authority. 

This is certainly a fair inference from the language 
employed and from the absence of any language 
clearly enlarging their powers. For it would have 
been easy to have used such language as would have 
left no doubt upon the question. 

I do not propose to discuss here, under this head of 
the argument, the force and effect of the words used 
in Article 13 of the constitution as bearing upon the 
main question. My present purpose is to show that 
we have no evidence anywhere, either in the lan- 
guage of the constitution, the debates of the conven- 
tion, or outside understanding in any quarter, of any 
intention at the time to change the rule that had so 
long prevailed in the government of the University. 
I am contending here for the point that there was an 
unbroken understanding from the beginning clear up 
to 1855, up to the inception of this controversy upon 
the subject of homeopathy, that the control of the 
University was in the hands of the Legislature, and 
that the regents were simply overseers and agents, 
subject always to the will of the people who were 
their principals and masters. 

IV. 

THE RIGHT AGAIN ASSERTED AND E.KERCLSED BY 
THE LEGISLATURE OF 1851. 

I come now, if your honors please, to the act of 1851, 
passed immediately after the adoption of the consti- 
tution of 1859, an act reorganizing the University 
under that instrument. 1 Comp. Laws, p. 11<)8. 



21f) ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 

Here I find this right of control for which we con- 
tend in this case most fully asserted and exercised. 
Indeed, if we look at the act carefully, and weigh it 
as a contemporaneous exposition and construction of 
the constitution, made, as it was, largely by the same 
hands, it would seem to be conclusive of this whole 
question. See Cooley's Const. Lim., p. 67. 

It is contended here that the regents have all 
power over the University, and that they derive this 
power from the constitution of 1850. And yet we 
find this Legislature of 1851 reclothing the regents 
with power and. authority the same as the Legislature 
of 1837 had originally done ; reinvesting them with 
the same functions which they had under the old 
statute when they were appointed instead of elected, 
and stopping there, without any recognition of the 
enlargement of their powers by the new constitution. 
Is this consistent with the claim which is now made 
for the regents } 

Again, the act of 1851 is replete with commands 
and directions to the regents in regard to the gov- 
ernment of the University, extending even to the 
minutest particulars. They are not only repeatedly 
told that " they shall have power " to do this and to 
do that, but they are also as repeatedly commanded 
that "they sJialV do this and do that. 

Take, for instance, the directions that the regents 
"shall make provision for keeping a set of meteoro- 
logical tables at the University;" that the regents 
"shall provide for the arrangement and selection of 
a course or courses of study in the University ; " that 
the regents "shall make an exhibition of the affairs 
of the University;" that certain monies "shall be 



ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 217 

expended by the regents in keeping the University- 
building in good condition ;" that the regents "may 
erect from time to time such buildings as are 
necessary;" that the regents "shall have power to 
expend so much of the interest arising from the 
University fund as may be necessary for the improv- 
ing and ornamenting the University grounds ;" that 
" it shall be the duty of the board of regents to 
organize and establish branches of the University," 
in certain cases. 

Still other instances might be given, but these are 
enough. 

On the very face of this act of IS.')!, in every sec- 
tion, sentence, and line of it, is clearly implied the 
right of the Legislature to control the University. 

Now I ask what becomes of the claim that the 
regents were made an independent body by the 
constitution of 1850, and that it was so understood 
then and afterward ? Could the Legislature of 1851 
have so understood it .-' If so, why these numerous 
commands and directions so clearly inconsistent with 
the exercise of independent authority by the regents ? 

There can be but one conclusion from all this. 
The Legislature of 1851 did uot understand that 
their authority and control over the University had 
been abrogated or impaired. Nobody so understood it 
then. Nobody claimed it, not even the regents 
themselves, until long afterward. 

Even to-day, in every other thing but this matter 
of homeopathy, the regents are acting under this 
statute of IS.il, obeying it still in all other particulars. 
They have thus recognized the power of the Legis- 
lature every year since this act was passed and they 



21cS ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 

now are carrying on the University under it as a 
fundamental law and charter. 

Have we not here, your honors, a strong case of 
legislative construction, the legislative department 
being the first one called upon to act, and that too 
so soon after the adoption of the constitution ? I 
submit that this construction and interpretation by 
the legislative department of the State government, 
which has been continually and consistently held 
clear up to the act of 187*3, is entitled to great respect 
in this court. Cooley's Const. Lim., p. 38. 

IV. 

THE RIGHT NOT QUESTIONED UNTIL THE ACT OF 
1855 ON THE SUBJECT OF HOMEOPATHY — NA- 
TURE OF THE PRESENT CONTROVERSY. 

May it please the court, there never was any pre- 
tense that this statute of 1851, with its plain asser- 
tion of superior power and its manifold assumptions 
of authority over the regents, violated the constitu- 
tion. To this day that act has remained unquestioned 
and has been obeyed in all things. Not until the 
Legislature of 1855 amended the act of 1851 by add- 
ing the proviso requiring that there "shall always be 
at least one professor of homeopathy in the medical 
department" did any question arise. Nor then did 
the regents at first fully rely upon the unconstitu- 
tionality of the amendment, for while technically 
raising the point, they nevertheless did entertain the 
question of compliance with the law, professing a 
half willingness to obey it " out of respect to the 
expressed wishes of the Legislature." The People, 
etc., vs. the Regents, 4 Mich., p. !>8. 



ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 219 

And again, at a more recent day, they have made 
a professed compliance with this very law, by formal 
resolutions of their board, the ground of an applica- 
tion to this court for the conditional appropriation 
by the act of 1<S()7. The People vs. the Auditor Gen- 
eral, 17 Mich., p. 161. 

In the last case cited, the regents did indeed claim 
that they had fully obeyed the law and had actually 
named and appointed a professor of homeopathy in 
the University. The fact that this court denied their 
application because they had established the profess- 
orship at Detroit instead of Ann Arbor does not 
change or alter the effect of their solemn recogni- 
tion of the authority of the Legislature. 

Could I not stop here, your honors, and argue that 
after this action of theirs the regents are estopped 
from denying that authority ? This, certainly, would 
be but the application of a plain legal principle to 
the case ; and surely, this game of fast and loose 
does not comport with the high character and dig- 
nity of this court or with the grave and important 
question which we have here to decide. 

But passing over this I will take the case as I find 
it here, with the full claim of the regents that all 
these statutes, since ISoI, are unconstitutional. 
That claim, I now repeat, is made solely on account 
of this question of homeopathy. 

And this brings us to the inception and real nature 
of this controversy. This tjuestion of authority and 
jurisdiction which has arisen between the Legislature 
and the regents, and which had assumed such threat- 
ening aspects and proportions, probabh' never would 
have been heard of but for this difference between 



220 ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 

these two schools of medicine, — this matter in which 
the doctors disagree. The government of the Uni- 
versity has encountered a question where men's 
interests, prejudices, and passions are excited and 
aroused, and these are most difficult to reconcile and 
allay The real difficulty which we have here is not 
in the questions of law which are to be settled. 
These, as it seems to me, are few and plain. But 
men can not see the law, however plain and simple 
it may be, through the eyes of custom and inherited 
prejudice, nor through the smoke of partisan conflict. 
It is the highest honor and glory of judges and courts, 
especially of last resort, to lift themselves above all 
these influences and obstructions into the pure air 
where the judicial eyes can see clearly the true rule 
to be applied. 

V. 

THE IMMEDIATE QUESTION — THE CLAIM OF THE 
REGENTS FROM THE PROVISIONS OF THE CONSTI- 
TUTION OF 1850. 

I come now, your honors, to the immediate ques- 
tion before the court, which is raised by the regents 
in their answer claiming that the provision of the 
constitution of 1850 gives them the power over this 
matter of homeopathy in the University, which, they 
insist, has been usurped by the Legislature. To 
come still closer to the question ; the regents insist 
that Section 8 of Article 13 of the constitution puts 
the creation of a chair or the appointment of a pro- 
fessor of homeopathy in the medical department of 
the University entirely and exclusively into their 



ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 221 

hands, subject to no control by the people through 
the Legislature. They insist that they are created 
an independent legal body, to do as they please on 
this subject and all others, without any responsi- 
bility to the Legislature. 

Putting aside now the trust created and the good 
faith required by the grant from the general govern- 
ment, the question also of contemporaries under- 
standing and legislative construction, and the still 
further question of estoppel by the acts of the regents 
themselves, let me examine the claim in the light 
solely of the words used in the constitution. Plant- 
ing the argument alone upon the naked language of 
the section, I insist that the claim of the regents 
must be denied. 

It is a question of intention. What did the framers 
of the constitution intend upon this subject .'' We 
have seen what the old statute was, what the under- 
standing had been. Did the constitutional convention 
intend to make a new rule ? 

The inquiry naturally suggests itself here : if the 
framers of the constitution did intend to make a new 
rule on the subject, why did they not employ such 
language as would have plainly indicated such inten- 
tion ? It would have been easy, as well as natural, 
for them to have done this. The fact that the words 
they did use are open to question and to argument 
furnishes itself, under the circumstances and history 
of the case, a powerful reason to show that they did 
not intend to make any new rule, or to change the 
well-settled understanding which had prevailed up to 
that time. 

Now, if the court please, take the language of the 



222 ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT, 

section relied upon, and let us see if it will bear the 
construction which is put upon it by the learned 
counsel for the regents. I need not remind the court 
of the elementary and well-understood principle of the 
law which governs in this construction. The words 
are to be taken in their plain and natural significa- 
tion. Cooley's Const. Lim., p. 5T. 

Here is the language to be construed : — 

"The board of regents shall have the general su- 
pervision of the University, and the direction and 
control of all expenditures, from the University 
interest fund." Sec. 8, Art. 13. 

They shall have the " general supervision of the 
University." What does that mean ? To supervise 
is to oversee, to inspect, to superintend. " Super- 
vision " is the act of doing these things. Webster's 
Dictionary. 

What, I ask, is there in the plain meaning and 
natural signification of this language, to justify the 
claim of the regents that they are clothed by it with 
the exclusive power to control the University in the 
matter of adding to its organic structure by the 
creation of a professorship of homeopathy ? What 
are they to supervise .'' — Plainly the University ; and 
as they found it, — there their power ends. They 
can not enlarge the University ; they can not take 
from it. Take the word "inspection" as a definition 
of " supervision." What is there, I ask, in the act of 
inspection that is akin to the power claimed here .-' 
And does not this definition clearly harmonize with 
our construction .'' Nor is superintendence, in the 
sense used here, a word implying any different office ; 
that, like inspection, means what the first word in the 



ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. l!23 

definition, " overseership," so clearly conveys — the 
act of overlooking something which has been com- 
pletely organized and set in motion by a superior 
power. 

Again, it is contended that the regents have this 
power from the language following : "and the direc- 
tion and control of its expenditures from the interest 
fund." 

"Direction" means " the act of governing," "ad- 
ministration," "superintendence," and "control " means 
"power," "authority," "government," and "com- 
mand." Webster's Dictionary. 

Now, taken together here, as used, the words evi- 
dently mean that the regents shall have the same 
power and authority over the fund as they have over 
the University itself; no more, no less. This is a 
view that accords not only with the plain meaning 
of the words as given, but also with the natural in- 
tention to give the regents, with the oversight of the 
University, its indispensable adjunct, the right of dis- 
bursement of its interest fund. Otherwise they could 
not, of course, manage it properly, or at all, for its 
running expenses must be met and its expenditures 
anticipated, l^ut this language falls far short of sus- 
taining the position of counsel on the other side. 
All these words of the section are precisely such as 
would naturally be used to invest the regents with 
the power which we admit they have — the power 
of management and administration of an existing in- 
stitution of the State, subject to the will of the peo- 
ple as expressed through the constitutional channel ; 
and are entirely consistent with a control and over- 
seership, subordinate to the will of the Legislature. 



224 ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 

On the other hand the construction which seeks 
to invest the regents, from these words, with supreme 
and independent power, seems to me a forced, 
strained, and unnatural one. The words are tortured 
out of their plain and obvious meaning, and made to 
convey a signification which they do not naturally 
import, and that, too, when, as we have seen, it would 
have been easy for the framers of the constitution to 
have used language, if that had been their intention, 
not susceptible of any doubt or false construction. 

Let it be remembered, also, in this connection, 
that the language of this Section 8 does not materi- 
ally differ from that employed in the old statute 
defining the power of the regents. This considera- 
tion helps us to understand the intention of the 
framers of the constitution in using it. 

In this connection, too, I find strong support for 
my position in the natural inference and conclusion 
to be drawn from another section of the same article 
in the constitution, which provides that the Con- 
gressional grant for education shall remain a per- 
petual fund to be "inviolably appropriated and 
applied to the specific objects of the original gift," 
etc. Sec. 2, Art. V?>. 

The "specific object" here, as stated in the grant, 
was "to support a University in such a manner as the 
Legislature may prescribe!' 

This language must be taken together ; it is all 
descriptive of the ''object." Congress did not endow 
a University to be under the control of a church, 
synod, council, or irresponsible board of regents. 
By accepting the grant, the State promised that it 
should not be. This promise should be kept. 



ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 225 

But there is still another important legal rule of 
construction which will assist us in the effort for a 
true understandinfT of the words in this section of 
the constitution which we are now discussing. I 
refer to the well-known principle that the whole 
instrument is to be examined where there is a doubt 
upon the construction of any section. Cooley's 
Const. Lim., p. 57. 

Each part of the constitution must be examined in 
the light of every other part. The constitution was 
adopted as a whole, and it must be compared with 
itself. If we have a doubtful clause, standing by 
itself, it may be made plain by comparison with 
other clauses. So says this rule of construction 
which all courts and judges recognize and obey. 

Now, if your honors please, let me apply this rule 
to the case before the court. Happily we shall not 
be left in doubt as to the sense in which the framers 
of the constitution of 1S5() used this word "supervi- 
sion " and the other kindred words which are grouped 
around it. The very first section of the article on 
education provides that the "superintendent of pub- 
lic instruction shall have the general supervision of 
public instruction, and his duties shall be prescribed 
by law." 

Here we have a demonstration of the whole argu- 
ment and from an authority which can not be ques- 
tioned. "General supervision ;" precisely the words 
used in reference to the regents — and in the same 
article and connection — upon the subject of educa- 
tion. Now, what is a fair and reasonable conclusion 
from this language .'' Can we not see here plainly 
that the constitutional convention did not mean by 
«5 



226 ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 

this language to give the regents a power superior 
to the Legislature, for who does not know that the 
superintendent of public instruction is not invested 
by the same words with any such power ? And to 
put the matter beyond all question, his duties are to 
be " prescribed by law ;" in other words, by the Leg- 
islature. Why now, I ask, may not the Legislature 
also " prescribe " for the regents, when their power 
is measured by precisely the same words in the con- 
stitution ? These questions can be answered only in 
one way, and I leave this point without further dis- 
cussion, for no more is needed. The light which 
shines from this first section of the article upon edu- 
cation completely dispels any darkness or doubt 
which might have rested upon the section which we 
have under consideration. I do not need to use 
argument where we have demonstration. 

I will not pause here to comment upon the mani- 
festly absurd and contradictory results which would 
flow from the construction put upon this clause in 
question by the learned counsel for the regents ; to 
test their construction by its practical effect and 
consequences, nor to point out the analogies be- 
tween the case of the board of regents managing the 
University, and that of the various boards having a 
like charge over our asylums, and other State educa- 
tional and eleemosynary institutions. These points 
are very fully covered by the able brief of my re- 
spected and learned associate in this argument, and 
they therefore require no special care at my hands. 

But before I pass from this head of the argument, 
I must deny, emphatically, the position taken by the 
learned counsel on the other side, that the conven- 



ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 227 

tion debates show that his construction of the clause 
in question is the true one. I do not so read the 
debates. I do not find in them any warrant for such 
an inference. The framers of the constitution did 
not allude at all to the question we have here, though 
they did divide in sentiment, and express anxiety 
upon the policy of making the regents elective — of 
throwing their selection into the hands of political 
parties and conventions. Con. Debates, pp. 782-824, 
802-804. 

This was the only question, your honors, which 
they discussed, and they passed no opinion upon the 
extent of power which they were conferring upon the 
regents. What concerned them was simply the man- 
ner of their selection. 

But is it not amazing, if the convention intended 
to make a new rule, and clothe the regents with abso- 
lute and independent power, that in all the debates 
upon the subject no member even- hinted at such an 
intention .' Have I not a right to draw a strong and 
overwhelming conclusion from this, and to insist 
that the convention debates, so far from helping the 
cause of the regents here, are very damaging to the 
claim which is set up in their behalf.' No help, cer- 
tainly, can be derived from that quarter to bolster up 
the pretension that the regents are an independent 
and irresponsible body in the State. 

Finally, upon this head, I invoke that rule of con- 
struction which has been so strongly affirmed by this 
court, and which holds that an act of the Legislature, 
not expressly prohibited by the constitution, or by 
necessary hnplication, can not be declared void as a 
violation of that instrument. Sears v. Cottrell, 5 



228 ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 

Mich., p. 2.')1 ; Twitchell v. Blodgett, 13 Mich., p. 
162. 

Surely I must be justified in saying that the statute 
in question here has enough to support it to create 
at least a doubt of its unconstitutionality, and thus 
to entitle it, under the cases just cited, to every pos- 
sible presumption in its behalf. 

VI. 

THE TRUE RELATIONS OF THE LEGISLATURE AND 
THE REGENTS TO THE UNIVERSITY. 

What then, may it please the court, are the true 
legal relations between the regents and the Legisla- 
ture, and of both to the University.-' This is the 
solution of the whole problem. 

I maintain that this grant from the general govern- 
ment was to the people of Michigan, and that it was 
placed, in the first instance, subject to the control of 
the Legislature, and that this was done with a purpose 
and with a far-reaching design. The State, after 
accepting the grant with this understanding, by an 
act of the Legislature, which we have already dis- 
cussed, establishedand organized the L^niversity, and 
created the board of regents, giving them all the 
power they had, and making them subject to legisla- 
tive control. Afterward the constitution of l.S."SO, as 
I contend, only continued their power, simply making 
them elective. They were thus constituted, as they 
had been before, a legal body, with certain well- 
defined and well-understood duties to perform, and 
which they were to perform in obedience to the will 
and direction of a higher power. In other words, 



ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 229 

they were to " supervise" the University inside the 
bounds of law and the limits set by the Legislature. 
The power and right of " supervision " thus given 
to the regents, I insist, does not authorize them to 
create or restrict any of the organic parts of the 
University. The word itself, as I have already 
shown, does not imply any right of this kind. To 
supervise, manage, and guard an institution already 
in being is a very different thing from creating or 
originating that institution or any of its parts. In 
the case we have here there was the creation of an 
addition to the present structure and organism of the 
University ; the founding of professorships of a new 
school of medicine in the institution. The regents, I 
contend, could not do this. They could simply gov- 
ern, not organize. This required the act of the Leg- 
islature, the supreme power in the State. The people 
who established the University in the first instance 
are alone able to direct in such a matter. The 
regents are simply to superintend that which has 
been established as a University. Their duties are 
strictly in the nature of overseership and agency, not 
in the way of organization. 

Hut again, I insist, your honors, that it would be 
not only a violation of the express terms of the 
grant, but entirely inconsistent and anomalous, under 
our system of government, to concede to the regents 
the power which they claim here. They ask us to 
concede, they ask this court to hold, that they are an 
independent, absolute, and autocratic power in the 
State. It is, in effect, gravely contended that the 
people of Michigan have, in three or four lines of their 
constitution, built up a body of men to control their 



230 ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 

favorite and most cherished institution for all time 
hereafter, as they shall please, without responsibility 
to the Legislature, to the people, or to anybody. 
Can this be so ? 

Nor will it do to say that the regents are re- 
sponsible to the people because they are elected by 
them. That is not legally or politically true. The 
people in a political system like ours act through 
representatives and not after the manner of the an- 
cient Athenian democracy. The State of Michigan, 
in a political and governmental sense, means the leg- 
islative, the executive, and the judicial departments 
of Michigan. And in the matter of expressing the 
will and wishes of the State in all things, the Legis- 
lature is the only authorized voice and organ of the 
people. Cooley's Const. Lim., p. 87. 

In the case we have here there can be no such 
thing as any legal responsibility to the people by a 
board of men who are elected separately, scatter- 
ingly, for terms of eight years. This, of itself, would 
destroy any collective responsibility. It is the State 
which here is having its work done by these regents, 
who are its servants, and it must be to their rightful 
master that they must stand or fall. Their responsi- 
bility is not to the political party or to the political 
caucus, but to the State whose will is only made 
known through the Legislature. 

So I say that an independent board of regents 
would be a political anomaly in the State. The 
stream can not rise higher than its source. 

" The Legislature is the supreme power of a State." 
Webster's Dictionary. 

There can be, of course, but one supreme power 



ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 231 

in a State. But clearly, your honors, it must be 
supreme, absolute, irresponsible power, which is 
claimed here. For if the regents have the power 
in this matter which is claimed, then they have all 
power. If they can do this thing, then they can do 
anything and everything. Then the act of lM5l, with 
its numerous directions and commands to the re- 
gents, was but legislative interference, unauthorized 
and to be resented. It is well to look this pretense 
full in the face. There is no compromise or middle 
ground. It is all power, or it is power subordinate 
to the will of the people. 

But nobody has ever claimed that the Legislature 
of l(S5l transcended its powers, and the regents, as 
we have already seen, have obeyed that statute in all 
things. Now I ask, in the light of this, if the Legis- 
lature may dictate to the regents in the matter of 
keeping a meteorological table, may they not in rela- 
tion to the establishment of a chair of homeopathy .'' 
If they may interfere in the smaller thing, so inti- 
mately connected with mere property custody and 
administration duty, why may they not in the greater 
one which so vitally affects the larger interest of the 
University ? I think it will be difficult for the learned 
and astute counsel for the regents to tell why they 
may not. 

If it be claimed that the regents derive the power 
to regulate and control the number and kind of pro- 
fessorships in the University, from the clause in the 
constitution as explained and amplified by the lan- 
guage of the statute of 185L giving them the right 
"to fix, increase, and reduce the number of profess- 
ors," then I reply, /irsi, that this is a very different 



232 ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 

thing from creating new professorships of a different 
school, and second^ that in so far as this right is de- 
rived from the Legislature, it is, in the case we have 
here, expressly qualified by the act of 1855, provid- 
ing that there shall always be at least one professor 
of homeopathy in the medical department, and by 
the act of 1873, which is a legislative command for 
the appointment of two professors of the same 
school. 

And by the act of 1851, the University was " con- 
tinued under the name and style heretofore used." 
Have we not here a hint that no change was to be 
made in any important respect .' 

Such, in brief, may it please the court, I conceive 
to be the true legal relations of the Legislature and 
the regents to the University. Such used to be, be- 
fore this unfortunate controversy arose, the general 
understanding, and with that understanding we had 
peace and harmony. That we have now strife and 
discord is due, in my judgment, not so much to any 
real difficulty in the law or its application, nor to 
any suddenly ascertained imperfection in a system 
which has worked so long and so well, but to the 
inevitable conflict which must come in courts, in 
legislative halls, and among the people when ancient 
systems are disturbed in the effort of the new to sup- 
plant the old. 



ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 23?> 

VII. 

THE GRANT FOR THE SUPPORT OF A UNIVERSUrV 
— WHAT IS A UNIVERSITY, AND WHAT SHOULD 
BE INCLUDED IN IT? 

May it please the court, I come now to a most 
important question which I deem to be involved in 
this argument. The grant of these lands by Con- 
gress was "for the support of a University." In all 
dealings with this subject by the State through any 
of its departments or officers, this prime and declared 
object of the beneficent provision should not be lost 
sight of. We have no business with these lands or 
their proceeds for a single day or hour unless we 
devote them with sacred fidelity to this object. The 
constitution of 1850 has made solemn provision for 
this trust, and has declared that the grant " shall 
remain a perpetual fund, to be inviolably appro- 
priated and applied to the specific object of the orig- 
inal gift," etc. We can not keep good faith with the 
general government, we can not properly interpret 
the constitution or pass upon the constitutionality of 
these statutes in question, without keeping constantly 
in view, as the pole star of our action, the great pur- 
pose of Congress, representing the people of the 
United States in first reserving and afterward dedi- 
cating these lands to the State of Michigan. 

And this beneficent purpose becomes all the plainer 
from the fact that the endowment for a University 
followed, or rather came hand in hand with one for 
the support of schools, thus making provisions for a 
broad system of popular education. 1 Comp. Laws., 
p. 38. 



284 ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 

The intention thus evidently was to bestow upon 
the new State, as her magnificent dowry upon enter- 
ing the Union, an ample and unfailing fund from 
which to support, for all time to come, a full and per- 
fect educational system, beginning in the humblest 
primaries, expanding into the graded and high 
schools, and surmounted, at last, by a noble Univer- 
sity, the fruit and crown of all educational systems 
and ideas. It was not a seminary, it was not an 
academy, it was not a college which was thus pro- 
vided for, but a University. What is a University, 
and what is included in the term ? 

Here I must speak briefly and in general terms. 
The history and details on this subject, though inter- 
esting and important, can not be given. 

The primary and ancient signification of the word 
"university" was completeness. In this sense Cicero 
and the Latin writers used it. Modernly, and as now 
used, it signifies an educational institution where a 
broad curriculum of study, including the arts, the 
sciences, the classics, and all useful knowledge, is 
taught. Following the idea implied in the original 
derivation and use of the word, the main purpose of 
a University is to furnish a complete education. It is 
an assemblage of colleges — ^ like the Universities of 
Cambridge and Oxford. 

"A University is properly a universal school in 
which are taught all branches of learning." Web- 
ster's Dictionary. 

Our University, as established, includes the three 
great departments of literature, science, and the arts, 
of law, and of medicine. It is this last which now 
concerns us. 



ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 235 

Each of these three great departments, I maintain, 
is to furnish a full and complete education in all 
things pertaining to it, or the fundamental idea of a 
University is violated. The qualities of fullness and 
completeness must extend to all its parts. In per- 
fect consonance with this, the statute of 18o7, estab- 
lishing the University, declared that " the object of 
the University shall be to provide the inhabitants 
of this State with the means of acquiring a thorough 
knowledge of the various branches of literature, 
science, and the arts." Rev. Statute of 184(), p. 216. 

And the statute of 1851, reorganizing the Univer- 
sity, after the adoption of the constitution, also 
declared that "the University shall provide the 
inhabitants of this State with the means of acquiring 
a thorough knowledge of the various branches of 
literature, science, and arts," thus echoing and repeat- 
ing the same language. 1 Comp. Laws., p. 1103. 

What then should be taught in the " medical 
department" of a University.', — Clearly everything 
which pertains to the science or practice of medicine 
Is it insisted here that homeopathy is not proved to 
belong to the science of medicine ? If so, I reply 
that that is a matter resting entirely in opinion ; for 
the science of medicine is not an exact science, and 
thus capable of demonstration. Is it a theory, sim- 
ply, and one on which the doctors differ. 

A learned physician of the old school, writing in 
our leading cyclopedia, admits this, and says: — 

'"The effect produced by medicines is known by 
practical experience, through long ages of observa- 
tion, but the modus operandi is still too little under- 
stood to warrant the assumption of a doctrine of any 



236 ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 

kind. The human being is not yet dynamically 
understood ; its modes of action in the physical or- 
ganism are abundantly mysterious, and until these 
problems are completely solved, the art of healing 
must be founded chiefly on a knowledge of effects, 
which knowledge is obtained from practical experi- 
ence alone." New Am. Cyclopedia, title Allopathy. 
It is no part of my purpose or duty in this argu- 
ment, your honors, to discuss the relative merits of 
these two opposing schools of medicine. That ques- 
tion lies outside of the record here, and must be re- 
ferred to another tribunal. The tribunal which is to 
settle such questions must be a body of men, edu- 
cated in the whole science and practice of medicine ; 
studying its laws, and observing its effects, and push- 
ing investigations into the region of new discoveries in 
the healing art. But it is for this very reason that I 
insist that the University is the proper and natural 
place where this education should be acquired, and 
where these investigations should be made. Above 
all theories of the truth is the absolute truth itself. 
There is a truth, — an ultimate right rule in the science 
of medicine, as in everything else, — and these doc- 
trines and systems and schools are but the gropings 
of men after it. 

VIII. 

HOMEOPATHY ENTITLED TO A PLACE IN THE 

UNIVERSITY. 
But aside from all these considerations, I maintain, 
if your honors please, that homeopathy, as a school 
or theory of medical science, has risen to such 
dignity and importance that it is justly entitled to a 
place in the University. 



ARCxUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 237 

We must not from preconceived opinions shut our 
eyes to plain facts. This system of medicine which 
is now asking admission into the University — nay, 
which the University has been commanded by the 
people's representatives to receive — has already 
conquered half the civilized world. I-'ounded by a 
man whose eminent learning and devoted self-sacri- 
fice have placed him among the world's heroes and 
reformers, it has, in the last fifty years, so fruitful in 
great improvements, risen to commanding influence 
and recognition, alike among the common people 
and among scientists and scholars, and now fairly 
disputes the field with its venerable adversary. 

Originating in Germany, that land of master think- 
ers and profound investigators and scholars, it has 
spread all over Europe, so that to-day nearly every 
European government has acknowledged W, and 
some have directed it to be taught in their universi- 
ties together with the old system. Russia, Austria, 
Prussia, and the German States have established and 
support a hospital for both practices. Switzerland 
has not only provided hospital privileges for the new 
system, but orders it taught in her universities. 
Italy has also the most liberal provisions on the sub- 
ject. Indeed, on the Continent in the great uni- 
versities and among learned men the new school 
is fast becoming, if it be not already, the more popu- 
lar and commanding of the two systems. Leipsic, 
the city which once, in the spirit of these respond- 
ents, banished the great founder, has now erected his 
image in monumental bronze, where it proudly pro- 
claims to all beholders the contrition of his perse- 
cutors and the triumph of his ideas. 



238 ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 

In this country the progress of the new school has 
been scarcely less marked and rapid. Its advocates, 
its institutions, and its practitioners may be found in 
all parts of the Union. There are two homeopathic 
colleges in Missouri, two in Ohio, two in Pennsyl- 
vania, two in New York, one in Illinois, one in 
Massachusetts. Very many of the States — I think 
a majority — have acknowledged the system in their 
legislation. Massachusetts has appropriated a 
large amount for founding the Boston Univer- 
sity with a medical department in which homeopathy 
is taught. New York has just completed an insane 
asylum at a very large cost, in which homeopathic 
treatment is alone to be employed. In every 
city and large town in the United States the phy- 
sicians of this school may be found, in nearly 
equal' numbers with those of the old school, and 
having equally as good a practice, going into the best 
and most intelligent families. There are one hun- 
dred homeopathic physicians in Chicago, eighty in 
St. Louis, and probably a proportionately large num- 
ber in every large city in the country. Nor does 
this practice of the new school stop in the cities and 
large towns ; it is to be found in the country and 
rural districts also. Every city, village, and hamlet 
in this State is supplied with homeopathic physicians. 
There are more than four hundred in this State 
alone. But recently, the National Institute of this 
school, which met at Niagara Falls, was said to be 
numerically a larger body than its rival, the National 
Medical Association, which held its sessions in De- 
troit the week before. 

Shall it be said, your honors, that Michigan is so 



ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 281) 

bigoted, so narrow, and so far behind the age as to 
refuse to let such a system, with such recognition 
and influence all over the civilized world, be even 
investigated or studied in her great University ? I 
protest against such exclusion in the name of the 
law. which, I insist, forbids it ; in the name of the 
University whose good name will be tarnished, and 
whose usefulness will be impaired by it ; and in the 
name of human progress itself, which imperiously 
demands that all bars and doors of ancient prejudice 
be broken and opened to its victorious march. 
Let it not be said that the University will be in- 
jured by the admission of homeopathy. I have no 
faith in such chimeras and prophecies of evil. On 
the contrary, I hold that the University can not 
afford to be thus narrow and ungenerous. Her arms 
should be extended wide to embrace every honest 
effort after the truth in science. She will never be 
harmed by being broad and generous and catholic ; 
by being imbued with the spirit of the age and 
abreast with its progress. Only narrowness and 
bigotry will hurt her. 

I know, your honors, that predictions of evil have 
never been wanting when innovations have been 
proposed in the ancient order of things Such pre- 
dictions were heard in the University when it was 
proposed to admit women to its privileges. They 
were repeated when women were admitted as stu- 
dents to this very medical department. And yet the 
University survives with all its prosperity, and all 
men now see that it is broader and grander than 
ever for this action. 

And so it has been with the history and progress 



240 ARC;UMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 

of medical science. Every step in that great science, 
from its first crude half barbaric outlines to its pres- 
ent commanding position as one of the great depart- 
ments of human knowledge, has been opposed by 
prejudice and custom, and made the occasion of the 
direst prophecies of evil. Two hundred and fifty 
years ago Harvey announced the discovery of the 
great fact of the circulation of the blood, and brought 
upon his head the denunciation of the whole medical 
faculty. But he was right and they were wrong, and 
medical science, without that fact, would be to-day 
what astronomy would be without Galileo's immortal 
discovery. Less than a hundred years ago Jenner 
announced the discovery of vaccination, a process 
which is of such incalculable benefit to the human 
race ; which prevents and assuages one of the most 
terrible human scourges. The denunciations visited 
upon the disciples and followers of Hahnemann by 
the advocates of the old school are mild in comparison 
with those which this great benefactor had to endure. 
He was assailed by the doctors of his day as a reck- 
less, dangerous innovator, and an ignorant charlatan ; 
his discovery was pronounced "bestial" and "dia- 
bolical," and the most vehement predictions of wide- 
spread contagion, contamination, and disease were 
made if it should be adopted in practice. 

These instances are enough, though more might 
be given. It is the same old story now ; the customs, 
the habits, the prejudices of the past contending 
against the spirit of inquiry and progress which is 
abroad in this age, and which so lifts up and blesses 
mankind. 



ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 241 

CONCLUSION. 

Finally, may it please the court, I urge that the 
highest considerations of public safety, welfare, and 
good, as well as the public right, unite in demanding 
that the principles of this new school be taught in 
the University. 

The office of the medical adviser and practitioner, 
of the physician, is one which is intimatel}' and 
closely connected with the tenderest and most sacred 
interests of the people. These men have our confi- 
dence as perhaps in all the relations of life we give 
it to no others. They enter our homes on their mis- 
sions of healing and mercy ; they have our lives and 
the lives of those who are dear to us in their hands. 
Is it not, I ask, of the first importance, of the highest 
consequence, that these men be educated for a trust 
so sacred .'' For our sakes, as well as their own, they 
should have the full advantages and opportunities of 
the University ; the general culture which they 
would drink in with its very air ; the instruction in 
anatomy, physiology, and surgery, with the advan- 
tages of clinics and the dissecting room ;*the study 
of pharmacy and chemistry, with its experiments ; 
and, besides all these, the privilege of access to a 
medical museum without a superior in the West. 
Every one of these studies, so important and indis- 
pensable to the proper education of a physician, is 
common to both schools of medicine, and should be 
pursued by both at a University which is the com- 
mon property and interest of the whole people of the 
State. 

Let it not be replied that the physicians of the old 
i6 



242 ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 

school are at hand to obey our call and that they 
have had and can have the advantages of our 
University. The people have the right to choose 
their physicians, but the more than four hundred 
practitioners of the new school in our State are shut 
out from the privileges of our highest seat of learn- 
ing. Is it said that they can be educated elsewhere .■* 
What ostracism is that .-* More than half the people 
of Michigan — a majority, as from this record I have a 
right to assume — are the believers in, and the patrons 
of, this new school of medicine, which every day is 
growing and increasing in numbers, power, and influ- 
ence. And yet I am to be told that they have no 
rights in the University which is an institution 
belonging alike to all the people of the State, and 
that their sons and daughters who may desire to be- 
come physicians must be sent by them beyond our 
borders, to States and communities more tolerant 
more generous, and more just. 

Is this right ? Is this for the good of the people 
of Michigan .'' Can we justify ourselves in such a 
policy of exclusion and bigotry by any sound rules 
of law, of -reason, or of morals.' Our University is 
made free from any denominational control in matters 
of religion ; should it not be equally free from the 
control of one school of medicine to the entire 
exclusion of the other.' Homeopathy does not 
demand that allopathy shall be driven out of the 
University. All it asks is that it shall be admitted. 

I do not stand here, your honors, to assail or 
impugn any man's rights or opinions or motives in 
this matter. But I do stand here to plead for 
equality before the law ; for the right of equal repre- 
sentation, a right so sacred and fundamental in our 



ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 248 

system of government. This right is inherent in a 
republic, or the commonwealth itself is but an organ- 
ized political falsehood and delusion. The men of 
the old school are undoubtedly honest and earnest 
in their belief, but so are the men of the new school ; 
and this is a republic, and not a despotism. 

It will not do, your honors, to say that this court 
is at the head of a co-ordinate department of the 
State government, and therefore represents the 
sovereignty of the people as much as does the 
Legislature. The judiciary, it is true, is an inde- 
pendent department of the government ; but its 
powers, as clearly marked out and defined in our 
political system, are to interpret and construe the 
law, not to make it. Only the legislative depart- 
ment can do that, the department through which the 
people directly act and speak. 

On this great question, one of the most important 
which has ever arisen in this court or in the history 
of the State, the people have spoken through that 
department in words of unmistakable import. They 
have written their will and direction in these statutes, 
and have demanded that the regents open the doors 
of the University to the admission of homeopathy. 

They have demanded this, not in the arbitrary and 
wanton exercise of power ; not to destroy or injure, 
in the least, the noble University which they cherish 
and love ; not to persecute or crush out the opposing 
system of medicine ; but in the name of common 
right and justice ; in the name of equal privilege and 
the public welfare ; and finally, in the name of that 
supreme rule of equity and fair dealing, which is the 
highest protection of the citizen and the chiefest 
glory of the State. 



TRIAL BY JURY. 



We have read with great satisfaction an address upon this subject 
delivered by Hon. Charles S. May, at the commencement of the Law 
Department of the University of Michigan. It consists of a studied 
defense of the jury system, couched in dignified and stately, and yet at 
times in animated, language. It is, indeed, such an address as would 
have done honor to Edward Everett. — S^ Louis Law Journal. 

Mr. President and Gentlonen : 

I SHALL use the hour which custom gives me on 
this occasion in speaking to you of one of the great 
institutions of English justice and the common law ; 
an institution of high concern to the State and all its 
citizens ; of supreme and practical interest to every 
lawyer — the trial by jury. 

It is a theme of most ample dimensions, and I shall 
not undertake to give all its history or all its learn- 
ing. In the limits of such an address as this I shall 
only take a few views of the subject, and these chiefly 
of a practical character. About to enter, as these 
young men are, upon the practice of the law, I can 
think of no topic more fruitful in suggestions to me, 
or likely to be of more interest and profit to them. 

ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF TRIAL BY JURY. 

The trial by jury is Anglo-Saxon in its origin ; a 
part of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence. Greece did not 
know it, nor Rome. The Grecian dicasts, the Roman 

* An address delivered at the Commencement of fhe Law Depart- 
ment of the University of Michigan, March 24, 1875. 
244 



TRIAL BY JURY. 245 

jtidiccs, the Saxon coiiipiwgators, these may have sug- 
gested and helped to form it, but each essentially dif- 
fered from it as we know it to-day. For the institution 
in its present form we go back in English history to 
the reign of Henry II, that same sagacious, far-seeing, 
and intrepid monarch who waged such stout and un- 
yielding battle with his powerful and ungrateful sub- 
ject, Thomas a Becket, for the supremacy of the civil 
over the ecclesiastical power. In the long line of 
English sovereigns, none has done a greater service 
to his countrymen and his race than this statesman 
king, who put the church below the state, and incor- 
porated into English jurisprudence the trial by jury 
in the place of the senseless and barbarous trials by 
duel and by wager of battle. 

Since the Grand Assize of 1 I7<s a period of almost 
seven hundred years, trial by jury has been one of 
the sacred muniments of English liberty. While it 
was yet in its infancy the sturdy barons at Runny- 
mede took care to make it a part of the great 
charter which they wrung from the faithless and 
treacherous John, the undutiful and degenerate son 
of its immortal founder. And since Magna Charta, 
in every struggle of the British people against the 
encroachments of the crown, in every popular up- 
heaval or revolution, in every advance toward a 
larger and broader liberty, the recognition and main- 
tenance of this institution has ever been stoutly 
insisted upon, so that to-day it would be easier to 
uproot the foundation of the British throne itself 
than to tear this venerated landmark from the Brit- 
ish constitution or the affections of the British peo- 
ple. The revolution which dissolved our political 



24G TRIM, BY Jl'RV. 

allegiance to the British crown did not deprive us of 
our inheritance of English liberty, and so trial by- 
jury descended to us on the broad stream of the 
common law. We share it now with every English 
speaking people. It is not only held in traditional, 
popular reverence, but it is solemnly incorporated as 
an inviolable right into the Constitution of the United 
States as well as the constitutions of most of the 
States of the Union. 

WHAT IT IS — ITS MISSION TO FIND THE FACTS. 

What, then, is this trial by jury which is thus 
highly prized and sacredly preserved by the foremost 
race and the two leading nations of the world .' It is 
an answer to this question, in general and popular 
terms to say that it is an institution of English and 
American jurisprudence designed to assist in arriv- 
ing at the truth in private disputes in relation to 
property and personal rights, and in cases between 
the state and the individual for the violation of pub- 
lic law. But it can only approximate to this end. 
Every form of trial known to the law is but an ap- 
proximation to, a struggle and endeavor after, the 
truth and justice of the case. Only with God, and 
in the realm of exact science, working through fixed 
laws, can absolute and certain truth be reached. Eor 
the rest, and in all the vast domain of moral and 
legal truth, we must feel after and attain to that 
which is true and just by such aids and lights as God 
has given us in the reason and conscience of men. 

In our administration of justice it is the province 
of a jury, a trial jury, of which I am speaking, to find 
the facts. This is a clear and single process, and 



TRIAL BY JURY. 1^47 

measures their duty and responsibility. But every 
case, of course, involves more than the facts. The 
law of the case is involved, also ; that which gives to 
the facts all their significance and consequence as a 
basis for the claim of plaintiff or defendant. The 
questions of law may be many or few, but for these 
the jury have no responsibilit)'. They are to take 
the law as given by the court, nor are they to ask 
any questions as to its abstract moral justice, but 
simply to find their verdict under it. So it will be 
seen that the work of a jury, though of controlling 
importance in a trial, is not the whole of a trial, but 
rather an incident of it. The entire work to be 
done, the full problem to be solved, is one of a dual 
nature, of mingled law and fact, and a trial by jury 
in a court of law is a carefully adjusted piece oi 
judicial mechanism, a wheel within a wheel, the most 
perfect and the most complete which human wisdom 
can devise. 

THE JURY SYSTEM DEFENDED — JURY BETTER THAN 
JUDGE EVEN IN CIVIL CAUSES. 

Does it need that I should defend, at this late day, 
an institution thus venerable in years and hallowed 
by popular affection ? Certainly it would seem that 
I ought not to be called upon to do this, and I shall 
not, at any great length ; but I do not forget that the 
men of this generation, wiser as they unquestionably 
are in many things than their fathers before them, 
have begun to question institutions which have stood 
for ages, and that the jury system has not escaped 
attack. To some restless innovators the mere fact 
that it is old is an argument against it. But every 



248 TRIAL BY JURY. 

considerate and thoughtful man will, I think, hesi- 
tate before condemning an institution which has 
been in continued daily operation for more than 
twenty generations of men ; which has become inter- 
twined with the history and traditions of his country 
and his race, and whose germs are found away back 
in the earliest civilizations. Progress, reform, judi- 
cial reform, — these are good and admirable things ; 
but we should take care to know what we do in their 
name. John Randolph once said in Congress that 
"change is not reform," and adding to his words, I 
may say, with still greater truth, that destruction is 
not reform. To abolish the trial by jury, to sweep 
out of use and out of existence with one blow the 
jury system, would be a terribly destructive and 
radical measure, a direct impeachment of the wisdom 
of the past, and a bold and hazardous experiment 
upon the future. 

Happily, there is no great danger that this will 
ever be done ; for the jury system finds its justifica- 
tion in the facts of human nature, which is essentially 
the same in all ages, in its practical utility and con- 
venience ; and in its close and inseparable relations to 
civil liberty. I say in its practical utility, and here 
I touch what is regarded as the chief and strongest 
point made against it. Many who would retain it in 
criminal cases and for its possible service in some 
great public crisis, nevertheless oppose it in civil 
causes and in the common every-day business of the 
courts. While agreeing with them fully in the 
reservations which they make in the greater things, 
I also believe that it is good and useful in the smaller 
things as well ; in civil as well as criminal cases, in 
ordinary as well as extraordinary times. 



TRIAL BY JURY. 249 

First, I believe tliat a jury is always the best and 
fittest tribunal to find the facts of a case. I hold this 
to be true in the very nature of things. I know the 
argument that is used upon this point, and what is 
said about unlettered juries, about difficult mental 
processes, and about the trained and disciplined 
mind of the judge. But here I believe is the better 
test : the facts to be found in a trial in the courts are 
generally the facts of common life ; the deductions 
and conclusions to be drawn from these facts, in nine 
cases out of ten, are the deductions and conclusions 
of ordinary human experience. These do not so 
much require learning and logic as practical common 
sense, knowledge of human nature as seen in men 
and not in books, and intuitive perception of right 
and wrong, — qualities oftener found combined, I 
think, in the jury box than upon the bench. 

It will not do to say that because the judge is 
generally the superior in natural endowments of the 
average juror, and ordinarily is his better in mental 
training and acquirement, that therefore he will the 
more surely and certainly draw from a mass of 
tangled facts the right and justice of the case. For 
facts can not be dealt with like principles or arbitrary 
scientific rules, and right and justice are not always 
to be arrived at like mathematical results. Often 
the very learning and discipline of the judge may 
have unfitted him for this work by educating him 
away from the people. And it should not be for- 
gotten in this connection that usually the facts in a 
case are narrated by a living witness present in 
court, whose look and manner and the probability of 
whose story should be scanned and weighed by men 
practiced in the ways of human nature and not easily 



250 TRIAL BY JURY. 

to be imposed upon. But grant, if you please, that 
there is no advantage in these respects with the jury 
on the grounds which I have claimed ; is there noth- 
ing still in the fact that the verdict of a jury is the 
aggregate wisdom of twelve men, while the finding 
of a judge is but the wisdom of one man ? Do the 
Scriptures say untruly then, and is there no safety 
in a multitude of counsel ? 

Again, it may well be urged as an argument for a 
trial by jury in civil cases that the judge has already 
enough to do, to preside in his court, to dispose of 
routine and ex parte business, and to decide all ques- 
tions of law which may arise upon a trial, including 
his final instructions or charge, without being bur- 
dened with the finding of the facts also. There is 
reason enough, certainly, why he should, if possible, 
be relieved of this. We should not ask too much of 
one man when we can have the work of many. Be- 
sides the finding of the facts and the application of 
the rules of the law to these facts are two entirely 
separate and dissimilar processes which do not^^help 
each other. They should therefore be given to sep- 
arate hands to do. 

If I am right in these things, then the jury system 
is justified on the score of convenience and utility 
even in ordinary civil disputes, and the objection of 
costs and expense is of too trivial a nature to be 
weighed against such solid public advantages. The 
State and the people can always afford to pay for 
that which will aid the cause of justice in any degree, 
and nothing can possibly be so expensive and costly 
to them as the denial of a full and fair trial to any 
suitor in court. 



TRIAL BY JURY. 251 

TRIAL BY JURY IN CRIMINAL CASES, AND AS AN ALLY 
AND BULWARK OF CIVIL LIBERTY. 

Hut it is in another and greater field that the trial 
by jury becomes a matter of supreme concern to the 
citizen, and rises to the dignity of one of the chief 
props and bulwarks of civil liberty. Here its use 
can not well be questioned. Here, certainly, it 
needs no defense. The leaning of the law, in crimi- 
nal causes, should be to the side of protection and 
humanity. And so it is declared to be. The State is 
great and powerful, and overshadows the individual ; 
and though it be necessary for its good that crime be 
prevented and punished, yet the State is not greatly 
harmed by the escape of a guilty man. But the con- 
viction and punishment by death or lingering impris- 
onment of an innocent man is a thing unspeakably 
shocking. No care can be too great to prevent 
such a tragedy. " Better, then«," says the humane 
maxim, "that ninety-nine guilty men should escape 
rather than one innocent man should suffer." And 
all our hearts and sympathies respond amen to 
this. 

So the law of England and America — the common 
law — has built up for ages its impregnable wall of 
protection around the citizen. It has covered the 
accused with the shield of all its presumptions in 
favor of innocence, and tenderly, humanely, given 
him the benefit of every reasonable doubt. And to 
make sure that he shall have no injustice done him, 
it has given him the sacred right of a trial by a jury 
of his peers, where only a unanimous verdict of 
twelve men shall take from him his good name, his 



252 TRIAL BY JURY. 

liberty, or his life. Not to any single man, however 
honest or wise, however trained or learned, will the 
law give over such supreme and terrible functions. 
Is not this wise as well as humane. '^ Would it be 
well to change this rule and put such tremendous 
issues into the hands of a single judge, and make him 
pass upon the law and the fact of guilt also.' I think 
nobody will thus contend. Whatever may be thought 
about the wisdom or policy of jury trials in ordinary 
civil disputes, every lawyer and every right-thinking 
man will wish the jury system retained in criminal 
causes. 

And there is another reason still, even graver and 
deeper than any I have yet named, why the trial by 
jury should never be abandoned. Not alone is it a 
protection and a shield to the individual citizen, but 
it is also a chief pillar of support to that great civil 
fabric in which are bound up the rights and liberties 
of every citizen of this country and of England. 
The right of a trial by jury, a great popular right, a 
right belonging to the whole people, is needed in 
the State to guard against tyranny and oppression 
by the government. In the mother country this 
right, expressly named in Magna Charta, of a trial 
by a jury of his peers, has been to many a noble 
English patriot the open door of escape from the 
bloodthirsty minions of a tyrannical king. Here we 
have no favored classes. We are all peers, each of 
the other ; but we all belong to the people, and a 
jury is pre-eminently a tribunal of the people. Thus, 
as a fortress and citadel of liberty in which the citi- 
zen may take refuge in calamitous times of public 
commotion or danger, when the safe ways of the 



TRIAL* BY JURY. 253 

state are broken up and the hand of power is out- 
stretched to bloody and violent deeds of oppression 
the trial by jury is worth all that it has cost in the 
long struggle in h'nglish history to secure and main- 
tain it. And this great reason of state must there- 
fore be added to all the other solid and weighty 
considerations which uphold the jury system. 

THE WORKING OF THE SYSTEM — ITS 
DIFFERENT PARTS. 

How does this institution, so important to the 
citizen and the State, and so intimately connected 
with the administration of the law, meet the ends 
for which it was designed, and what is needed fOr its 
true and harmonious working. -* Let me glance now 
at the trial by jury as we know it to-day, in this 
country, with its usual appointments and surround- 
ings. I want to analyze some of its leading ele- 
ments, and to speak of some of the duties which it 
imposes upon its chief actors. For the trial by jury 
means more than the jury, merely, and its duties. 
Besides the jury, there is the judge who presides ; 
there are the parties, the contending rci of the suit 
and their witnesses ; and there, finally, to complete 
the scene, are the advocates for the respective sides. 

Each of these parties is indispensable to a trial, to 
say nothing of sheriff and clerk, and other officers 
and appendages belonging to a court. Each is a por- 
tion of the whole, and all must move together to 
reach a judicial result. Here is the law's mechan- 
ism ; the wheels and cogs which perform their dis- 
tinct and separate offices. But this is no inanimate 
machine which is now set in motion ; no material 



254 TRIAL BY JURY. 

contrivance of human ingenuity, working with wood 
or stone or iron, and for a material purpose. It is 
rather the delicate and profound adjustment of the 
subtile and imponderable forces of the human mind 
and soul, — the perception, the reason, the judgment, 
the conscience, — all called into action, and all com- 
bined in the effort to reach those two grand moral 
ends, trnth and justice. All this gives dignity and 
seriousness to such a proceeding. So, also, is there 
something essentially picturesque and dramatic in 
every trial by jury. It is always a living panorama 
of human life and experience which is unrolled in a 
trial in a court of justice ; sometimes grotesque and 
ludicrous as any comedy ; sometimes deep and 
awful as any tragedy. 

THE ACTORS IN A TRIAL- — THE JUDGE. 

Only a hurried glance can I give to the actors upon 
this stage. F'irst, there is the judge, who presides, 
and declares the law. His part is a great one, and 
for him we have all inherited a traditional reverence. 
At the name of his title there rises before our minds, 
from the awful mists and shadows of the common law 
and its history, the august form of the ideal judge, 
sitting with stately dignity upon the judgment seat, 
holding with even and steady hand the great balances 
of justice and equity ; with the law's majesty upon 
his brow, and the law's terrors in his eye, and robed 
in spotless ermine, type and emblem of the whiteness 
of his character and his judgments. Alas, that this 
great presence should so shrink and vanish away 
when we look upon some of our living judges ! 

But let us not expect too much of our judges, es- 



TRIAL RY JURY. zoo 

pecially while we pay some of them so little, for they 
are but men like the rest of us. I do not speak here, 
of course, of our law judges proper, — our judges of 
courts of last resort, — but only of nisi prius, or trial, 
judges. 

The chief qualifications and duty of a judge who 
presides at a jury trial can be easily and briefly 
stated. F"irst of all, of course, a judge should be 
honest. Without this jewel in his crown all the rest 
is worthless. Nothing can make up for this. It is 
bad enough to be a dishonest man or lawyer, but a 
dishonest judge is an abomination to men and a grief 
to the angels. He poisons a clear fountain from 
which all the people must drink. Let him ever be 
held in utter abhorrence, whatever his abilities ; even 
if he be great and wise as Bacon. Next, a judge 
should be impartial. The law is equal, the law is no 
respecter of persons ; and a judge is but a minister 
and servant of the law. His duty, then, in this 
respect is plain. Then a judge should have dignity. 
I do not mean that opaque and owlish dignity which 
is simply ponderous, but that which is lighted and 
lifted up by grace and intelligence ; the easy pres- 
ence and the cultivated manners, combined with the 
high sense of personal honor and the lofty judicial 
purpose, — all making a judge who adorns as w^ell as 
honors the bench. Such a judge I saw ten years 
ago, sitting in a case of murder, in one of the courts 
of the city of New York ; and whenever I see that 
man's name, as I frequently do, — for he has since 
filled a high executive office, and become a distin- 
guished leader of his party, and one of the public 
men of the country, — I recall him as I saw him 



1^5(j TRIAL BY JURY. 

then, presiding with that blended gentleness and 
firmness, and with a grace and finish of judicial man- 
ners which I shall never forget 

And a judge should have dignity and weight of 
character as well as dignity of presence and man- 
ners ; for when he takes his seat upon the bench, 
men's eyes will see the man who is behind the judge. 
For myself, I esteem this one of the most necessary 
and desirable qualities for a judge ; and it is one 
that I think is too much overlooked, in these later 
times, in our selection of judges. This may be 
partly owing to the vicious method of choosing our 
judges by the caucus ; but it is certain that there 
has been a great decline in this respect, in many 
quarters, and that there is danger that the bench 
may lose that traditional respect and reverence with 
which it has always been regarded by the people. 
The great judges have nearly always been men of 
high personal character. We venerate the names 
of Hale, of Mansfield, and of Marshall, not more for 
the broad, clear intellect and the deep learning than 
for the lofty dignity of character, the high moral pur- 
pose, and the penetrating intuition of justice, which 
like unfailing springs flowed out into the clear pages 
of their illustrious lives. 

Turning now to the intellectual furnishing of a 
judge, it is easy to see what we want, — far easier 
than to find what we want. First of all, a judge at 
nisi prius should have a clear head and a decisive 
will. He should apprehend readily and decide 
promptly. There should be no confusion or irreso- 
lution. A jury trial, with everybody waiting, is no 
place for a judge to doubt, and read law, and pon- 



TRIAL BY JURY. 2o7 

der. It is of first importance that he decide all ques- 
tions at once, so that the trial may proceed ; and, if 
he makes mistakes, they may be corrected by a 
court which can take all the time it wishes. Next, 
and as a most important qualification, a trial judge 
should be a man of broad common sense, a man who 
understands human nature at first hand, on the wit- 
ness stand, in the jury box, and in the bar. 

If, to these qualities he can add broad and deep 
learning in the law, it is well ; and this will fill out 
the perfect picture and model of a great judge. But 
I put this qualification last in the order, for the rea- 
son that it can better be dispensed with than any of 
the others. Learning alone will not make a judge, 
nor even learning joined to high personal character. 
Something more is needed. The native hue of reso- 
lution must not be sicklied o'er with the pale cast of 
thought. He must be a man of action, with facul- 
ties all alive and alert; a man of honest heart, and 
sound head, and firm will, and knowledge of every- 
day human nature, who successfully presides over 
the always arduous and sometimes stormy and excit- 
ing scenes of a trial by jury. The greatest judges 
are born judges, having, like the true orators and 
poets, the royal commission of nature, impressed 
with the seal of God himself, to attest their right to 
discharge the high duties of the bench. 

THE PART OF THE lURY — WANT OF RESl'ONSI- 

* 

HILrrY IN JURIES. 

I shall say but a word of the part the jury plays in 
the trial, and that only in regard to the character 
and duty of its individual members ; I have already 



258 TRIAL BY JURY. 

spoken of it in its collective form, and as an institu- 
tion of the law. The theory of the trial by jury is — 
and this is held to be its chief excellence by one of 
its ablest eulogists — that the jury is a tribunal sud- 
denly called from the body of the people to try the 
facts of a case, and that after discharging that duty, 
it as suddenly dissolves and returns to the people 
again. It is a tribunal, therefore, which offers little 
time or opportunity for tampering or corruption 
before it begins its work, and when that work is 
done, it disappears so suddenly and completely that 
nobody can hold it to account. I know it is the policy 
of the law to protect the jury from any civil or crimi- 
nal responsibility for its verdict ; and this exemption 
from account has given it a freedom and independ- 
ence most necessary to its highest usefulness. This, 
indeed, is a great merit in the jury system ; but it 
gives rise, at the same time, to one serious, practical 
defect, which every lawyer has had occasion to 
notice. I refer to the want of individual responsi- 
bility in juries. It is easy to see how this comes- 
Each juror is put into the box ignorant of the case 
which he is to try ; and this very ignorance the law 
encourages, as a test of his impartiality. He looks 
about him, and sees eleven other men, each one as 
ignorant of the case as himself, and each with a 
responsibility as great as his own. He has nothing to 
do but to listen ; he is not called on to say anything ; 
he is charged to refrain from declaring his impres- 
sions to his fellows, even ; and when all is done, and 
the case is submitted, he casts a silent, unrecognized 
ballot with the rest. Even should discussion arise in 
the jury room, and he be called on there to express 



TRIAL BV JURY. 259 

his opinion, the law will seal the lips of all who hear 
him, so that what he says and how he votes may 
never be known to the outside world. Under these 
circumstances it is natural that an indolent or timid 
juror should fail to give the case an earnest, thought- 
ful, and conscientious attention ; that he should sink 
his individuality in the mass, and hide his own 
responsibility behind the eleven. 

It is for this reason that the law and public duty 
alike require of every individual juror the full and 
independent exercise of his own judgment and con- 
science in every case. I think it would be well if 
this duty could be emphasized from the bench. The 
verdict of a jur)- should stand for the aggregate 
judgment, intelligence, and conscience of twelve 
men. Of course, under our system, and with the 
exceptions allowed, it can not represent the highest 
intelligence. Hut with some exceptions, chiefly in 
the large cities, and growing oqt of improper and 
corrupt selections by ignorant or dishonest officers, 
our American juries are supposed to represent, and 
do generally, I think, represent, the average intel- 
ligence of our great middle class. Every man who 
submits his case to a jury has a right to such a ver- 
dict as I have described. That he does not always 
get such a verdict we know and frequently have 
occasion to lament. It is because our jurors do not 
feel their personal responsibility and do their per- 
sonal duty in a case where they sit, but evade this 
duty and responsibility in the mass, each hiding 
behind the other eleven. 

It is for this reason that I confess to having always 
had a measure of sympathy for that much abused 



260 TRIAL BY JURY. 

and denounced individual, the disagreeing or mi- 
nority juror. I can not always bring myself to join 
in the chorus of denunciation, which is set up over 
this poor Ishmaelite of the courts. Why should he 
always be thus assailed .'' Does it necessarily follow 
that the other eleven are right, and he is in the 
wrong.'* Besides, is there no question of conscience 
here .'' It may be a case involving directly a great 
question of right and wrong ; one whose decision is 
to be followed with consequences which do not sim- 
ply take away money or property, but blast charac- 
ter, deprive of liberty, or take human life. On such 
a question is he to follow other men's judgments, and 
take other men's consciences .' He has taken a sol- 
emn oath for himself to find a true verdict ; what 
shall we do with that .'' If he thinks the crime not 
proved, shall he consent to send an innocent man to 
the dungeon or scaffold on other men's judgments 
and oaths .'' 

Here is a difficulty which all must see. I know it 
is frequently aggravating, in small cases on the civil 
side, and especially on questions of mere damages, to 
have verdicts prevented, and parties and the public 
put to expense, for the mere obstinacy of a single 
juror. But while this is so, who shall say that in the 
larger and graver cases which I have supposed, it is 
not the juror's duty to stand firmly to what he thinks 
is right, notwithstanding his fellows are of another 
opinion .'' Must he not justify himself to his own 
conscience .'' Can we denounce him in such a case, 
and join in acclamations over men who in science, in 
government, and religion have stood out stubbornly 
to the end against greater odds, — not one to eleven. 



TRIAL BY JURY. 261 

but one to eleven hundred or eleven thousand and 
more, — and who have been exalted to the very 
heights of honor and fame, and pronounced immortal 
heroes for the act ? Let us not be unjust or incon- 
sistent. The disagreeing juror by the very fact of 
his disagreement shows that he has a mind of his 
own, and that is a good deal. Commend me always 
to a man who has a mind of his own, and thinks for 
himself. It is better to think wrong sometimes than 
not to think at all. In this world of unthinking 
agreement and conformity, where so many men 
seem to have no minds of their own, and only wait 
to see what others think, I can not help admiring the 
sturdy Anglo-Saxon independence of the one juror, 
who stands out against all the rest. It is really 
refreshing once in a while to find a man who will sit 
up all night, without meat or drink, for his opinion — 
and keep eleven other men up with him ! There is 
no sanctity about the verdict of , a jury. It may be 
wrong and false like the greater verdicts of a sect, a 
party, or a nation. Who does not know that whole 
nations and peoples have sometimes, yes, frequently^ 
been in the wrong, and rendered false verdicts, and 
cruel verdicts, which have been set aside in the great 
court of history. The brave minority, which op- 
posed those verdicts, even unto death, have earned 
the gratitude and received the plaudits of mankind. 

THE JURY ADVOCATE — HIS NECESSITY. 

I come now to a most important feature in the trial 
by jury ; one not only most essential to it, but of 
peculiar interest to those whom I address. I am to 
speak now of the advocate, his necessity, his qualifi- 



262 TRIAL BY JURY. 

cations, and his duty. Here, too, while I have much 
to say, I must necessarily be brief. The great sub- 
ject opens out before me in many inviting ways, but 
I must not follow them too far, lest my hour shall 
close upon an imperfect and incomplete picture of 
what I wish to present. 

Only a word shall I say of the necessity for the 
advocate in the trial by jury. I am not here to com- 
bat or argue with that ignorant and vulgar misappre- 
hension of the law's justice which would abolish law- 
yers and advocates. Widespread as this prejudice 
sometimes seems to be, it is so utterly destitute of rea- 
son, and so plainly gives way before the least reflec- 
tion that it never takes any tangible form or shape^ 
but lives only on men's tongues as a thoughtless and 
flippant accusation against the bar. It has no solid 
influence in society or the State. Every man who 
reflects a moment will see that an advocate is indis- 
pensable to a trial by jury ; just as indispensable as 
the judge or the jury itself. Anglo-Saxon justice, the 
justice of the English law, does not condemn a man 
unheard. It gives him the fullest and fairest oppor- 
tunity for defense. It will hear what the State or 
his adversary says against him, and then it will hear 
what he has to say on 'the other side. In short, it 
hears both before it decides. The trial is in a court 
of law, and it is the law which governs and controls 
in every case. But the law is a great and abstruse 
science, and only those who make its study a life 
work can understand and administer it. The great 
body of the people, of course, can not know or master 
this science. Hence the necessity for a class of men, 
trained and educated in the law, whose business and 



TRIAL I'.Y JURY. 263 

duty it shall be to stand in the courts, and assist in 
the application of its rules and principles to the thou- 
sand varying cases of fact which arise in the clashing 
of men's interests, rights, and passions in the daily 
march and whirl of the world's affairs. 

And so in all ages and in all nations, where there 
has been any approach to civilization, the lawyer has 
been found. Greece and Rome had him, though they 
did not have the trial by jury ; and, indeed, he has 
flourished in past ages, and flourishes to-day in every 
country on the globe, where any form of trial is known, 
so indispensable is he to the very idea of a trial. He 
is ordained in the justice and humanity of the law to 
represent and plead for those who can not, in the very 
nature of the case, properly or effectively conduct 
their own cause in court. 

THE QUALIFICATIONS OF THE ADVOCATE. 

What are the qualifications needed in the advocate 
or jury lawyer ? I speak here especially of natural 
qualifications, and those which are acquired in the 
study and the practice of the art of advocacy, rather 
than of the preliminary and general learning in the 
law required by the profession. For the jury lawyer, 
especially, is not made by this general training. He 
is more a product of nature than of the schools. I do 
not, by any means, wish to disparage learning at the 
bar ; but learning alone will not make good advocates, 
else they would be more common in the courts. They 
are not common ; they are rare ; and the great advo- 
cates are at wide distances apart, — two or three at a 
time, perhaps, in England or America ; a half dozen 
in a century. Statesmen and great divines, and war- 



264 TRIAL BY JURY. 

riors even, are more common. In their scarcity, and 
possibly in some other respects, the great advocates 
more resemble the great actors, who hold the mimic 
stage, as they so often do the real. 

This is because there is a genius of advocacy as 
there is a genius of acting, and a genius of poetry. 
Talent and application will make a great statesman 
like Palmerston, and sometimes a great soldier like 
Wellington ; but only genius, which is far more rare, 
will make a great advocate like Erskine or Choate. 
In the same way the great poets are born, not made. 
They do not plod, and study, and make poetry at so 
many hours to the day, as business men work in their 
stores and offices ; but they mount up to the heav- 
ens of imagination when the divine inspiration comes 
upon them. We can not imagine Shakespeare writ- 
ing " Lear " and " Macbeth " at regular days' work, or 
Byron dashing off his sublime apostrophe to the ocean, 
or his magnificent description of the mountain storm 
of Jura, as an allotted task before he should go to his 
dinner. It was the genius of poetry which took posses- 
sion of these men. and transfigured their faces and 
lifted them up into the mountain of song, where they 
took little note of time, hunger, or worldly things, 
until the lofty strain was finished. So Curran stood 
before an Irish jury, the very impersonation of the 
genius of advocacy, as with flashing eye and quiver- 
ing lips he thrilled or melted them with thoughts of 
country or memories of home. No labor of prepara- 
tion could produce such results ; it was the flaming 
out of pure genius, — the most unalloyed and perfect 
in his case, and in this respect, which has ever 
appeared at the bar. 



TRIAL BY JURY. 265 

But I do not forget that there must be advocates 
who have not this divine gift, and I would by no means 
be understood to undervalue learning and preparation 
in the advocate. To a certain extent, at least, these 
are indispensable. What I meant to say was, simply, 
that greatness in this calling must depend on the 
original endowment of nature; that a great advocate 
can not be made by application however severe, by 
learning however profound. I know it is the fashion 
with us here, in this country, where we have no sepa- 
rate orders at the bar, to attempt all things in the 
profession and to wander indiscriminately into all its 
fields. The same man does the work of a scrivener 
or conveyancer, gives law advice in his office like a 
chamber counsel, is a practitioner in chancery, a 
draftsman, an attorney in the inception and prepara- 
tion of his cases for trial, and finally the advocate 
before the jury. Every fair lawyer is supposed to be 
capable of all these things, and almost every lawyer 
attempts them all. Now I think we cover too much 
ground here, and that this promiscuous employment 
tends to repress and destroy especial excellence in 
the profession. In the large cities, it is true, this 
state of things is somewhat modified, because there 
men can find enough to do in certain branches of 
the profession for which they may be particularly 
adapted ; but it is not so in the country, where the 
lawyer is expected to do everything, from the draw- 
ing of a deed or simple contract to the conducting of 
a trial for murder. In a new country like ours, and 
with the practical difficulties in the way, it may not 
be possible for us ; but I believe the English system 
is the best. The highest excellence at the bar can 



2G6 TRIAL BY JURY, 

not be attained where the practitioner does a little of 
this, and a little of that, and never enough in any 
one line to bring out all his powers. And the work 
of the jury lawyer is one that especially requires, 
besides natural adaptation, every-day practice and 
experience. Besides there is something absurd and 
almost grotesque in its unfitness in a lawyer, whose 
voice ought never to be heard outside an English 
court of chancery, standing up before a jury, — dry, un- 
sympathetic, passionless, destitute of every attribute 
of an orator, to plead for a man's liberty or his life- 
I hold eloquence to be almost a si7ic qua non in 
advocacy. The true jury lawyer ought to be an elo- 
quent man. I do not mean that he should neces- 
sarily be a great orator ; but he ought to have some 
of the attributes of eloquence. He ought to be a man 
of quick sympathy, of impressible and electric tem- 
perament ; a man to catch the inspiration of a cause, 
and throw his feelings along with his logic into the 
jury box. Here, I think, is the true secret of the 
great advocates. It consists in that personal mag- 
netism, that indescribable charm and sympathy of 
voice and manner which gives them control over the 
feelings of a jury, and when that is obtained, the rest 
is comparatively easy. With this main qualification, 
which is largely a question of temperament, the advo- 
cate should have a quick perception, good judgment, 
self-control, knowledge of human nature, and the 
power to handle facts. This mastery of the logic of 
facts is indeed one of the chief qualifications of the 
good advocate. It is what he needs to analyze and 
detect the weak points of his adversary's case, and to 
arrange and mass his own evidence with the most 



TRIAL BV JURY. 267 

effective and telling power upon the jury. Put this 
with that electric and sympathetic eloquence which I 
have described, and you have a vast power to let loose 
upon the jury in the final argument ; a power which 
perhaps too frequently sweeps them in its resistless 
might from the safe conclusions of reason, and some- 
times, indeed, from the solid foundations of justice. 

ADVOCACY AND STATESMANSHIP COMPARED. 

In this brief outline of some of the leading qualifi- 
cations of the jury advocate I have indicated an 
order of ability which is necessarily rare. But though 
rare, I do not consider it of the first order. In its 
intellectual part it is keen and quick, rather than 
deep and profound ; in its moral aspect it partakes 
of that which lies upon the surface of human nature, 
rather than that which goes down to the deeper 
things of the soul. It imparts and reflects the sym- 
pathy of the time or the occasion, instead of being 
always true to fixed and unchangeable moral prin- 
ciples. So I think it takes a higher order of ability 
to make a great philosopher or a great statesman 
than it does to make a great advocate. True, the 
themes of advocacy and statesmanship are very dif- 
ferent. The advocate deals with principles in the 
concrete ; the statesman in the abstract. The advo- 
cate labors in the courts for the rights or interests 
of individual men in concerns which are brought 
directly home to them with intense and practical 
power ; the statesman in the Parliament or the Con- 
gress deals with principles and generalizations which 
affect men in classes or nations, and have to do with 
the welfare and prosperity of states and empires. 



268 TRIAL BY JURY. 

Thus the statesman's work is necessarily the 
higher and more important, and I think it requires 
the higher ability. This, I take it, would be the 
verdict of history. There have been some men who 
have divided almost equally the honors of statesman- 
ship and the bar. Such were Brougham and Lynd- 
hurst, in England ; such, largely, our own Webster. 
But generally the two spheres have been separated, 
and I may say that with respect to the especial 
department of jury advocacy they have always been 
separated. No really great advocate has been at the 
same time a great statesman. This may seem a 
hazardous statement, but I think it is true. Daniel 
Webster was a great man before a jury, as he was 
certainly in the Senate. But he lacked a great many 
things to make him such an advocate as Rufus 
Choate or even Ogden Hoffman. He was too slow, 
too ponderous, too unwieldy. There was not room 
enough for him in a trial before a jury. A man like 
Webster could not bring his vast intellectual arma- 
ment to bear in such a trial. It does not require a 
whole army, with its artillery, infantry, and cavalry, 
to capture an isolated point, or break through a 
single place in the enemy's line. A division, or 
sometimes a brigade, or even a regiment, which can 
be handled quickly, is better for this purpose. And 
so, while Webster made a few jury arguments that 
were masterpieces, still he can not be regarded as 
beginning to equal in his forensic efforts the splen- 
dor of his senatorial eloquence where the themts 
were greater and grander. And Webster comes as 
near uniting the two characters as any other name I 
can think of in our annals. Remember, I am speak- 



TRIAL r.V JURY. 209 

ing here of jury lawyers. As great constitutional law- 
yers to expound and advocate great constitutional 
questions and the deep underlying principles of the 
law, which are allied to statesmanship, Webster and 
Pinckney, and some other of our statesmen, have 
greatly shone, and stood in the front rank. 

But Krskine, and Choate. and Hoffman, and other 
advocates of scarcely less note, men who have ruled 
and swayed before the jury, have so lamentably failed 
in statesmanship that they fully prove my point. 

THE DUTY OF THE ADVOCATE — THE OLD QUESTION 
OF THE ETHICS OF THE PROFESSION. 

What shall I say of the duty of the advocate ? 
Surely I come here upon delicate and difficult 
ground ; for I can not, with my views of the subject, 
content myself with the general and sweeping an- 
swer that the advocate is to stand in the place of his 
client and do everything and anything in his name. 
True, he represents his client, and speaks for him in 
the courts ; and this is well, and necessary, and 
wisely ordained in the fairness and justice of the law. 
But how may he represent his client ? WHiat may 
he speak for him .-* These are the questions that 
gives us the difficulty. 

It is the old difficulty which has troubled the 
minds of some men ever since the days of Cicero 
and Ouintillian, and even before ; the difficulty 
which Dr. Johnson and the poet Southey have dis- 
cussed on either side ; settled now, perhaps, satis- 
factorily to the minds of a majority of lawyers and 
to most moralists, but to some not yet wholly 
removed. Possibly, nay undoubtedly, the question 



270 TRIAL BY JURY. 

is aggravated by the almost universal fashion and 
practice of the bar. The theory of advocacy is one 
thin;^ ; the every-day practice of it is often quite 
another thing. And yet as a matter of theory, there 
have always been those inside of the profession who 
have maintained a doctrine on this subject which 
to my mind is offensive to good morals and espe- 
cially degrading to advocacy. It is the doctrine 
advanced by so great a man as Lord Brougham, and 
practically and conspicuously illustrated by so great 
an advocate as Rufus Choate, — the doctrine of the 
complete and utter identification of the lawyer with 
his client. 

An overpartial biographer of our great American 
advocate, himself a lawyer, writing with all the 
ardent zeal of private friendship and unbounded 
admiration for his subject, has recorded of him that 
" his client was his god ; " that " his client's interest 
was his religion ; " that " he never inquired whether 
his client was right or wrong, but he went for vic- 
tory to the last beat of the pulse and the last roll of 
the drum." Perhaps this is as offensive a statement 
of this doctrine as we can find anywhere, connected 
as it is in this instance with the debasement of almost 
superhuman and angelic powers, but it is elsewhere 
enlarged and elaborated by Dr. Johnson and other 
writers into a system of plausible and fallacious 
refinements of judicial casuistry and Jesuitism. 

I can not descend here to details, but I must pro- 
test with all my might against this specious but 
demoralizing view of the duty of the advocate. I 
contend for a higher, broader, nobler rule. I know 
that so great an authority as Cicero has said that 



TRIAL BY JURY. 271 

the first duty of the advocate is to assist him who 
most needs assistance ; but with all deference to a 
name so illustrious, I hold that a better rule would 
be to assist him who most deserves assistance. The 
theory of a trial by jury is not to clear guilty men 
who are in trouble. It is rather to afford an oppor- 
tunity for the conviction of guilty men and the vin- 
dication of innocent men unjustly charged with crime. 
When guilt is known or confessed, there is no need 
of a trial in the real and full meaning of the term. 
After that there remains but the just order and the 
decent formality of the law. A trial is an inquiry, 
an endeavor after the truth or fact of guilt or inno- 
cence. If the client be guilty, then he does not need, 
in the contemplation of the law, the assistance of the 
advocate ; for the fact of his guilt is the end of all 
inquiry on the subject, and the end of all interest 
which the law takes in his behalf. For the rest, it 
will only demand that the fact of guilt be judicially 
ascertained, and in assisting to do this the advocate 
serves the law rather than the criminal. 

lUit here come the casuists, and say : How can it 
be known that he is guilty until he is proved so .-* — 
It can not be judicially, technically known, it is true ; 
but it can be known to the advocate in the broader 
way and in a moral and popular sense just as other 
facts are known. It may be known from the client 
himself; it may be known from overwhelming moral 
evidence surrounding the case. This is the state of 
facts I am supposing, and this is the reason why I 
say that it is not what the client needs to enable 
him to escape a just penalty which he has incurred, 
but what he deserves as a man whose guilt is still in 



272 TRIAL BV JURY. 

doubt, at least, which should command the zeal and 
the service of the advocate. I grant that the lawyer 
should not prejudge his client's cause ; that he 
should presume everything, indeed, in his favor. 
But after all that is done, it will frequently happen 
that the advocate will be compelled to believe his 
client guilty. It is specious nonsense to say that we 
can nevc-r know that a man is guilty till a verdict of 
a jury has pronounced him so. We can be satisfied 
of it sometimes just as well before as after the ver- 
dict. We may know it through the same facts which 
compel the verdict ; we may know it better still by 
the private confession of the accused. Shall the law- 
yer, under these circumstances, exert himself to the 
uttermost, using superior powers and skill to obtain 
a verdict of acquittal for his client, the same as 
though he knew him to be innocent ? Is that a just 
and proper rule .■* Is that the true idea of the ethics 
of advocacy .-* 

I protest against such a doctrine as a wrong to 
society and a slander upon the law. I insist that the 
first duty of the lawyer is to society and the law. 
and that his duty to his client is always subordinate 
to this higher duty. All this is involved in his law- 
yer's oath. He is first of all sworn to uphold the 
constitution of the State. Upon this rests the whole 
civil fabric of society. Next he is to be true to the 
court. The court represents and stands for the 
sanctity and majesty of the law itself. It is the 
interpreter and vindicator of the law. Finally he is 
to be true to his client. But he can not be true to his 
client in any sense while he is false to society and 
the law. That is not the kind of truth he is to keep 



TRIAL BY JURY. 273 

with his client. His oath presupposes no conflict 
between his client's interest and the interests of the 
State. He is not sworn, therefore, to help a guilty 
man, whom he knows to be guilty, to escape at the 
expense of law and justice. If he does this, he 
becomes an enemy to society and a conspirator 
against the law ; for society can not be held together 
without the punishment of the guilty, and the law 
is powerless and dishonored if it can not enforce jus- 
tice. Away, then, with the specious plea, the dan- 
gerous fallacy, that the highest duty of the lawyer 
is to stand between his client and the State, and 
protect him always, right or wrong. No doctrine, 
in my judgment, could be more disloyal to the State, 
or degrading to the profession. Too much, far too 
much, is this doctrine acted upon at the bar. The 
indiscriminate and overzealous defense of criminals 
without thought or care as to their guilt ; the 
unreasonable theories, the unscrupulous tactics, the 
browbeating of witnesses, the reckless assertions, 
and the bold affectations of truth and innocence, — 
these are the things which have brought criminal 
advocacy into disrepute with the people ; which 
have kept so many able, self-respecting lawyers from 
this department of practice, and made the very term, 
criminal lawyer, signify want of character and 
honor ; have almost made, indeed, the adjective 
stand for a designation of the kind of lawyer, rather 
than the kind of practice. 

No; the highest public duty is always to the State, 

and nothing must conflict with that. The lawyer 

should never forget that he is a citizen. He should 

never lend himself or hire himself to any service 

i8 



2Y4 TRIAL BY JURY. 

which will harm or hurt society. His noble pro- 
fession does not require him to do this. It does not 
demand that he be the unscrupulous aider and helper 
of ruffians and law-breakers, nor a mere unthinking 
human machine of advocacy. It has other and 
higher commands for him, other and nobler work 
for him to do. 

Let me not be misunderstood. Every man who 
prosecutes or defends a civil cause in a court of jus- 
tice is entitled to the lawyer's help to make a fair 
preponderance in his favor. Every man who is 
accused of crime must have a fair and impartial trial, 
with the assistance of counsel, and must be acquitted 
if not proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. 
While, then, the lawyer stands for him in either 
case, he does it as an officer of the law and of the 
court, and under a solemn oath to do his duty to 
both. If his client is in the wrong, and he knows it, 
I think it is his duty to withdraw from the case, or 
at most to see only that the forms of the law are 
complied with, that only justice is done, and that no 
dangerous precedent is set. If next, it be greatly 
doubtful to him whether his client be in the right, 
even then, I say, give him the benefit of the doubt 
and struggle manfully, but guardedly and within the 
bounds of a due moderation for his cause. So much 
is due to the client on the one hand and to the law 
on the other. But if now the advocate knows, or 
fully believes, his client to be in the right ; to be, 
for instance, an innocent man unjustly accused of a 
great and heinous crime, then comes the supreme 
duty, the highest which man can perform for man. 
Then let learning and eloquence, and tact and 



TRIAL BY JURY. 275 

energy, and every power and attribute be put under 
contribution for the noble work. Stand up bravely 
then if need be against the menace of power or the 
frowns of public opinion ; let no mobs terrify, no 
odds appall, no opposition daunt ; yield not one inch 
of ground till driven from it ; struggle with tireless 
and sleepless energy to save a fellow man from a 
fate so unspeakably awful. This is true advocacy in 
its noblest form, almost godlike in its character, 
and the crowning glory of the bar. Such advocacy 
has been seen in the courts, and in many notable 
instances its courage has been as fine and its chiv- 
alry as superb as were ever witnessed on any battle- 
field. 

IMPROVEMENTS AND MODIFICATIONS NEEDED IN 
THE JURY SYSTEM. 

But with all its faults of advocacy, and with the 
many impediments to its fair and just working, the 
jury system is the best that can be devised, and 
should be retained. The fine balance of its several 
parts, necessary to its complete and harmonious 
movement, is frequently disturbed in practice, and it 
sometimes seems to fail of its true ends. Like all 
human institutions, it is not perfect. It may, undoubt- 
edly, be improved, and I think it ought to be improved 
in some important respects. 

In the first place I think it should be improved by 
changing, in civil cases, the rule requiring unanimity. 
The frequent disagreement of juries is one of the just 
complaints against the system, and these are the 
necessary fruits of this rule. I can not here go into 
a discussion of this question which has already 



27G TRIAL BY JURY. 

received the attention of law-writers and law- 
reformers, but it has always seemed to me that the 
weight of reason and argument was on the side of a 
modification of the old rule. The question should be 
looked at in its practical bearings. Whatever the 
origin of the rule, — whether it came from the num- 
ber of the Saxon compurgators, or from an old require- 
ment of the agreement of twelve, when the whole 
number was greater, or from the wish of the law to 
protect each individual member of a jury from respon- 
sibility by requiring unanimity before giving any 
effect to their action, — it should give way to a better 
administration of justice. 

I believe this modification is required and demanded 
by strong practical reasons and considerations which 
are felt every day in the courts. Certainly the 
requirement of unanimity is somewhat inconsistent 
with the general rule which prevails in a Republican 
form of government, where the gravest public ques- 
tions are settled by a bare majority. It would seem, 
on principle, that if a question which vitally affects 
the welfare and happiness of a whole people may be 
settled by the preponderance of a single vote in mil- 
lions, that a little petty matter of private dispute, 
between two neighbors, ought to be settled by a two- 
thirds vote of a jury for one or the other. And no 
man can doubt that this would directly facilitate the 
disposition of causes in the courts. 

I would not hesitate, then, to make the reform. It 
is not sufficient reason to me for retaining a bad rule 
to say that it has prevailed for many hundred years. 
Because it is old does not necessarily show that it is 
right. But while I would make this change in civil 



TRIAL BY JURY. 27Y 

cases, and permit a two-thirds vote to carry a ver- 
dict, I would not disturb tlie rule in criminal cases ; 
for there the accused ought to have the benefit of the 
rule as it stands. The humanity of the law and the 
reasons for greater caution and certainty all require 
that he should only be found guilty on the unanimous 
judgment of the whole twelve. 

Again, another disturbance of the just balance and 
working of the system is frequently seen in the wrest- 
ing of the trial by jury from its original purpose as an 
investigation of facts, and turning it into a proceed- 
ing where the effort seems to be how not to find the 
facts. The utility of this form of trial lies in its 
adaptation to find the merits of a case by a direct and 
clear inquiry for that purpose- It is not a place to 
try questions of law like a court of last resort, and it 
should, as far as possible, be kept clear of all legal 
technicalities and discussions. Our jury trials are 
frequently burdened with too much law. I know it 
is often the policy and tactics of counsel for defense 
to obscure the real issues of fact by raising false 
issues of law ; and many times, too, the effort is suc- 
cessfully made to draw the minds of a jury away from 
the main and decisive facts in a case into labyrinths 
of fine-drawn speculations and remote collateral ques- 
tions. Our courts should draw the line more tightly, 
and keep closer to the real issues. 

It is these long, wearisome, verbose trials, burdened 
down with remote collateral issues, and hair-splitting 
discussions of legal technicalities, and finally closed 
by long, jumbled, and confusing charges from the 
court, that produce almost inevitable disagreement 
of juries. The native common sense and discernment » 



278 TRIAL BY JURY. 

of a jury droop and die in such an atmosphere. From 
such a trial the average juror comes forth in a bewil- 
dered and half-demented condition — almost ready 
to be sent to a mad-house. It is useless to expect 
just and intelligent verdicts under such circumstances. 
One of the chief things which need correcting in this 
matter is the judge's charge. I think our recent 
statutory fashion of giving charges in separate and 
detached legal propositions, first on one side and then 
on the other, is a bad one in practice, and tends 
greatly to confusion. Our judges ought to be able 
to charge on their own motion, in language so clear 
and simple that the most ordinary juror could under- 
stand. The charge of the court should be clear and 
consistent with itself, a logical whole, a legal setting 
for the facts of the case, or the outlining of its legal 
boundaries, within which the jury are to perform 
their duty. It should generally be brief, simple, and 
general ; it should not descend too much to par- 
ticulars, and above all it should leave the jury untram- 
meled as far as possible in their own peculiar field 
and province. 

One further improvement in the jury system is 
needed to bring it into complete accord with the 
spirit and progress of our age. I refer to a modifica- 
tion of the old rule of challenge, so as to meet a 
difficulty which is frequently found in securing an 
intelligent jury in cases of great public interest or 
notoriety. The want of a proper readjustment of the 
rule excluding jurors on the ground of opinion to the 
actual condition of our newspaper-reading people 
has of late, in many quarters, become a real scandal 
upon the law, and a great hindrance to its just admin- 



TRIAL BY JURY. 279 

istration. A general reform is needed in this respect 
throughout the country. Mere in Michigan, how- 
ever, with our remedial statute upon the subject, 
supplementing a wise and liberal construction of the 
common-law rule by our supreme court, we have little 
left to be desired. 

ERSKINE AND CHOATE. 

Into this arena of the trial by jury have stepped 
some of the brightest intellects of the world. In the 
brilliant constellation of advocates who, in the last 
hundred years, in England and America, have re- 
flected the light and glory of their genius upon the 
forensic stage, I would place Erskine and Choate 
at the head. I do not forget Brougham and Denman 
and O'Connell and the marvelous Curran on the 
other side of the ocean, nor Pinckney and Hoffman 
and Prentiss and Paul Brown and Brady on this side. 
But all these and many more able and gifted men 
are fairly distanced by these two great and incom- 
parable advocates, who must stand in their respec- 
tive countries as the bright particular stars of the 
jury forum. 

But although P>skine and Choate were almost 
equally great as jury lawyers, their lives and careers 
present a series of sharp and striking contrasts. 
Erskine, the scion of a noble Scotch family, with 
imperfect early education, and after years wasted in 
a most opposite and dissimilar pursuit, took up the 
law when weary and disgusted with the life of an 
army officer in time of peace. Choate, a New Eng- 
land farmer's son, came early to the bar, after full 
preparation, and worthily crowned with academic 



280 TRIAL BY JURY. 

and collegiate honors. Erskine never became a 
scholar, and was never distinguished for learning in 
the law or wide reading of literature. Choate in all 
his subsequent career was a laborious student, and 
undoubtedly ranked higher in legal and general 
learning than any other advocate of his time. In the 
work which these men did at the bar the same con- 
trast is presented. It happened to Erskine to be 
employed in a remarkable succession of great state 
trials, in which he became the advocate of the rights 
and liberty of the citizen against public despotism ; 
and in giving the deathblow to the doctrine of con- 
structive treason, and vindicating the right of free 
speech and a free press, he performed the noblest 
service to the law and the free constitution of the 
empire, and won unfading and immortal forensic hon- 
ors. Choate, on the contrary, was never privileged 
to argue a single case of great public political impor- 
tance, but was compelled to use his vast and varied 
powers in questions of mere private interest and dis- 
pute,- — a circumstance which in his last days he 
recalled with pathetic regret. 

So in the splendid and unequaled gifts which each 
brought to the bar they were still dissimilar. Er- 
skine, who commanded the higher power and the 
better art, spoke in singularly clear and felicitous 
language, in sentences short, and rich with beauty, 
and strong with logic, and not unworthy of the great 
models of I^nglish speech which he found and studied 
in Shakespeare, Milton, and Burke. Choate, whose 
learning was deeper, and whose vocabulary was 
wider and ampler, spoke in sentences of remarkable 
length and resounding sweep and rhythm, and aston- 



TRIAL BY JURY. 281 

ished all by the amazing affluence and gorgeousness 
of his diction. Both were men of high imagination ; 
but while Choate was more poetical and subtile in his 
fancy, Erskine was more vivid, intense, and prac- 
tical. Choate dazzled and overwhelmed a jury; 
Erskine swept and mastered them. Choate more 
resembled Cicero, who was a rhetorician as well as 
an orator; while Erskine was more like Demosthenes, 
who was the greater master of true eloquence. 

In their personal appearance and outward manner, 
also, these great advocates were widely different. 
Erskine was fresh and buoyant, full of vivacity, and 
of fine and engaging presence ; Choate was angular 
and almost ungainly of form, of pale and haggard 
countenance, and with only the divine genius look- 
ing out from his deep and burning eyes to distin- 
guish him from an ordinary man. Possibly this may 
account for the fact that Erskine was full of personal 
vanity, while Choate was singularly modest and 
unenvious. 

But in the midst of these many contrasts one great 
and striking parallel stands out in their public 
careers. Each left the bar for a brief season for serv- 
ice in a legislative assembly, the one in the British 
House of Commons and the other in the Senate of 
the American Congress. Each wearied and failed in 
the new and uncongenial place ; and stranger coin- 
cidence still, — each met and quailed before a great 
parliamentary leader ; Erskine before the imperious 
orator and statesman, William Pitt, son of the great 
commoner of England, and Choate before another 
proud and arrogant parliamentary chieftain, Henry 
Clay, the great commoner of America. 



282 TRIAL BY JURY. 

Returning now to the bar and the courts, after 
their legislative failures, the old contrast stands out 
again in their lives, even to the very close. Erskine 
went upon the chancellor's woolsack for a brief 
period, and then retired at fifty-seven from the bar 
and the courts. Choate returned from the Senate to 
the bar while yet in his prime, and gave thereafter 
his best powers and most brilliant efforts to his pro- 
fession. Erskine died at seventy-three, after a long, 
sad evening to his life, in which he missed the old 
excitement of the courts, and found no compensation 
in the love of books, that sweet solace of cultivated 
old age. Choate broke down suddenly at sixty, 
while yet in full practice, his nerves shattered by the 
long contentions of the forum ; dying prematurely, 
and missing what he had so longed to enjoy — a 
peaceful and restful evening to his stormy and labo- 
rious life, when he could forget the fiery encounters 
of the bar in the sweet studies and unfailing delights 
of the books he loved so well. And so in death the 
great advocates present their last sad contrast, as 
each missed the closing felicity of his life — the one 
in living too long, the other in dying too soon. 

CONCLUSION. 

Thus all too briefly and imperfectly have I sketched 
this great institution of the trial by jury, and, as I 
turn away from the theme, I deeply realize how much 
is left unsaid. The greatness of the subject has em- 
barrassed and oppressed me. In considering it our 
minds run back through many stormy scenes of Eng- 
lish history, through many great political changes 
and revolutions, to the early and memorable days 



TRIAL BY JURY. 283 

when the foundations of constitutional freedom were 
laid in England by the first successors of the Con- 
queror. Then and there began to be builded the 
grand and majestic edifice of the common law, and 
into its solid masonry was wrought the trial by jury. 
There let it remain so long as the magnificent struc- 
ture shall stand. 

It has been a glory and a boon to England ; it is 
and will be a blessing and a glory to us. No man 
can safely predict what our national future will be. 
The events of our recent history have disturbed that 
easy and boastful confidence in our institutions and 
our future that once prevailed. I invoke no specters 
to rise in our national pathway ; I cast no horoscope 
of coming ills, but whatever the future, whether 
cloudless and serene or stormy and tempestuous, it 
will be well to hold on to the trial by jury. We may 
never have tyrants, we may never have Caesars, but 
if we should have them, they will seek to accomplish 
the downfall of free government, not by directly over- 
riding the Constitution, but by using the forms of 
law to strangle and subvert its spirit. No central 
despotism, no rule of moneyed or political monopolies 
can successfully control for tyrannical or sordid pur- 
poses an institution which derixes its life and power 
from the great, honest masses of the people. And 
here will be our safety. 

For the jury system is the handmaid of freedom. 
It catches and takes on the spirit of liberty, and 
grows and expands with the progress of constitu- 
tional government. In England, in the seventeenth 
century, under the tyranny of the Stuarts, a jury, at 
the instance of a cowardly and despotic king, sent 



284 TRIAL BY JURY. 

the noble Russell and the brave Sidney to the block 
for constructive treason. A hundred years later, an 
English jury acquitted Lord Gordon, and Hardy, and 
Home Tooke, and Thelwell, on the same charge, 
although pressed by the whole power of king and 
government ; and a little later still, not all the influ- 
ence of the ministry, though aided by the savage 
energy of a chief justice of England, could ring from 
an honest and fearless English jury an unjust verdict 
against a poor and humble private citizen, who, all 
unaided by counsel, conducted his own defense. 

No ; civil liberty can not dispense with any of her 
armaments. She needs them all to battle with tyr- 
anny and oppression. Trial by jury is one of the 
chiefest of these. The noble panegyric which Black- 
stone pronounced upon it in his immortal commen- 
taries is well deserved, and if it be true, as he 
suggests, that possibly Rome, Sparta, and Carthage 
fell because they did not know it, let not England 
and America fall because they threw it away. 



THE FARMERS' MOVEMENT. 



ITS USES AND ABUSES — THE TRUE CONDITIONS OF 

THE FARMERS' PROSPERITY AND 

ADVANCEMENT. 

Ladies and Gentlcincn^ Farmers of St. Clair County : 
Your invitation to me to address you to-day is 
evidence of a broad and catholic spirit, and does 
you honor. I am not a granger, nor even a farmer 
but a lawyer ; a member of a class not held, I 
believe, in these days in especial favor by the farm- 
ing community. It is true I was a farmer's boy, and 
once did a full man's work upon the farm in the 
pioneer days of western Michigan. But you did not 
know that, and the fact does not, therefore, detract 
from your liberality. 

You honor yourselves, further, in reviving this 
feature of the annual fair. The address went out of 
our fairs when the fast horse came in. The horse 
has not left yet, but the address is gradually coming 
back ; and possibly at some distant day, in some 
far-off millennium of human intelligence, it may 
fairly compete in popular favor and interest with the 
horse race. You certainly make a good beginning 
and set a good example in this matter. 

Now, fellow citizens, I do not come here to-day to 

1 An address delivered at the St. Clair County Fair, at Port Huron. 
Mich,, Oct. 14, 1875. 

285 



286 THE farmers' movement. 

waste this hour of talk, which should be profitable, 
in the commonplaces of eulogy and flattery upon 
the farmer and the farmer's calling. You would not 
thank me to do that, — you might suspect my 
motives if I did it, — and, more than that, I should 
be ashamed to do it. It does not need that I should 
say these things which have been so often said 
before. It is enough for the honor and dignity of 
your calling that it is the broad industry which con- 
stitutes the supporting base of all material pros- 
perity, of all social order, of all human advancement ; 
and it is sufficient for its healthfulness and beauty 
that it is carried on in the pure air and under the 
open heavens. Neither eloquence nor poetry is 
needed to emphasize facts like these. 

What, then, shall I say to you ? I can not tell you 
what I know about farming, for that is not worth 
telling, and besides, would soon make an end of my 
speech. Shall I confess, then, that I have nothing 
to say to you, and make my bow and retire ? — No I 
ladies and gentlemen, I shall make no such confes- 
sion as that, for I think I can find, outside of 
commonplace flattery, and outside of personal 
experience, something practical and profitable to 
say to you. You are an audience of farmers before 
me to-day. You probably are not all grangers, 
though many of you, possibly most of you, are. But 
all over the land, in the last two or three years, the 
farmers have been organizing into granges, so that 
the grange has come to be a power in the State ; a 
political power, courted and dreaded by political 
parties ; a business power, eagerly watched by 
business men ; a social power, beginning to be 



THE farmers' movement. 287 

largely felt in bringing farmers and their families 
into closer and better social relations. All this has 
had the effect to make the farming class, their rights, 
their privileges, their grievances, and their demands, 
the topic of widespread public and private discussion. 
Pardon me now, if I improve this occasion in speak- 
ing to you of some of the true uses of this great 
organization which has come so suddenly into 
being ; of some of its possible abuses ; and of the 
true and best conditions, national and personal, for 
the prosperity and advancement of the farming class. 
Let me talk to you plainly, sincerely, and ear- 
nestly of these weighty and important matters. 

Of course I must speak to you as an outsider, 
simply as a citizen to other citizens, from my own 
point of view, and with no knowledge save that 
which is common to all. I yiekl to no man in my 
respect for the farming class, and they have my full 
and hearty sympathy in every just and reasonable 
demand ; but the truth is first of all to be spoken. 

THE BENEFITS OF ORGANIZATION — OBJECTS 
OF THE FARMERS' MOVEMENT. 

There can be no question about the benefits of 
organization for farmers as for everybody else. 
Whatever is worth having in society, in business, in 
politics, or religion is worth organizing for. Indeed, 
it can not ordinarily be obtained without organiza- 
tion. The old fable of the bundle of sticks teaches a 
new lesson every day. A single farmer, crying out 
for reform or for a redress of grievances, no matter 
how honest and earnest he may be, is a compara- 
tively^helpless and insignificent object, and his cry is 



288 THE farmers' movement. 

lost in the mass. But let twenty thousand farm- 
ers stand with him, and echo his cry for redress, and 
they become an immense power in the State. Men 
will hear them who would not listen to him. The 
single drops are combined to make a Niagara of 
power. The embattled farmers of Lexington and 
Concord, who, one hundred years ago, 

" Fired the shot heard round the world," 

were few and insignificant in numbers, and could not 
have stood against the power of the British king. 
But when they were joined by their brethren of the 
other colonies, from Massachusetts to the Carolinas, 
they swept the power of the king into the sea, and 
made us a nation. 

Now, the farmers in their movement have simply 
availed themselves of this power of organization. 
They have combined with one another to promote 
the common objects in which they are interested. 
In this they have done well and wisely if the ends 
which they strive for are honorable and worthy. 
Nobody can blame them for working together for any 
good and laudable purpose. Are their purposes as 
they announce them, good and laudable ? If they 
are, then they should have the sympathy and hearty 
co-operation of every good citizen, of every other 
class, provided, of course, they pursue these ends by 
justifiable means. 

Primarily, I suppose, the object of the farmers' 
movement may be stated to be twofold ; first, for 
improvonent^ and second for protection. As to the 
first of these objects there can be no possible ques- 
tion. The farming class, like every other class 



THE farmers' movement. 289 

needs improvement, and the effort for it is most 
praiseworthy. I can not stop here to go into details, 
but every man must commend this aspect of the farm- 
ers' movement. It is a great thing and a grand thing 
for farmers to resolve that they will associate and 
labor together to increase the special knowledge and 
culture and facilities needed in their calling ; that 
they will seek out all new improvements, and try all 
better methods of farming ; and especially that they 
will improve their social ancK intellectual condition, 
and bring families and neighbors together for the 
noble cultivation and the sweet satisfactions of the 
intelle,tual and social life. These are things most 
beneficent and beautiful, and would, themselves, 
repay all the effort which has been put forth and suf- 
fice to make the grange a name of honor and dignity. 

But what of the other great object — that of pro- 
tection .'' Is there any need of that .'' Can it be that 
in this land of constitutional freedom, where every 
man's rights are supposed to be s-acredly guarded by 
the law, that peaceful, law-abiding, hard-working 
farmers — a whole class, a most indispensable and 
useful class, c()mi)rising so large a part of our popu- 
lation — should need to organize themselves together 
for protection against anybody } If that be true, is 
it not a sad reflection upon our institutions and our 
civilization } 

Fellow citizens, however strange the fact may seem, 
I think it must be confessed that there is a strong 
element of justice in the claim which the grangers 
make, that they are compelled to combine for protec- 
tion against the strong and selfish forces by which 
they are surrounded. Nor is the fact so strange after 
19 



290 THE farmers' movement. 

all. Human nature asserts itself here and now as it 
has done elsewhere and always, and human nature is 
selfish and grasping. The law will not protect men 
against all the evils in society and the State. It 
covers only a limited field. Rack of the domain 
which the law surveys with its eye, and guards with 
its protecting hand, is a region where human passion 
and greed have large swing and play. 

THE GRIEVANCES COMPLAINED OF. 

Now it is largely here that the cause of complaint 
arises. You farmers claim, and justly, I think, that 
in the jostling and clashing and grinding together of 
these great forces of human nature, where the one 
supreme law is selfishness, and the one supreme end 
is to make money, you are frequently crowded too 
hard, oppressed, and trampled down, and your great 
industry put under tribute to the money kings and 
the money power. Vou complain, and justly, that 
after working hard, early and late upon your farms 
through the long year, the crops that you have 
gathered in spite of drought, and rust, and fly, and 
weevil, are decimated and wasted by the extortionate 
rates for transportation to market, by the costs and 
charges of useless middlemen, and by the payment 
of usurious interest and inordinate taxes. Here is 
the grievance of which you complain ; here is the 
tyranny which you have banded together to resist 
As a class, second to none in solid usefulness and 
moral worth, you are entitled to a full and fair hear- 
ing in the great court of public opinion, and to a 
full redress of wrongs whenever the remedy can be 
found. 



THE farmers' movement. 291 

Fellow citizens, we can not get along in this coun- 
try peacefully and prosperously while any class is 
oppressed, while any industry is repressed and tram- 
pled down. That is not in accordance with the 
genius of our institutions ; that is not the spirit of 
American liberty. 

Now, fellow citizens, I must talk to you in a general 
way, of course, and without going into all the details 
of this matter. As I have already said, I think your 
cause of complaint is well founded, in the main at 
least, and that the American people should give ear 
to it. But granted that the evil exists, is there any 
remedy for it .'' and if so, what is it ? I think there is 
a remedy, and that it will appear plain and simple 
enough when we look at the real and true causes of 
this state of things of which the farmers com[)lain. 
Here is a great difficulty in the State, causing a paral- 
ysis of industry and the oppression of a class. How 
has it come about .-' The natural, normal working of 
the laws of trade would not produce it. Those laws 
work evenly and equally when not disturbed. Things 
have been so arranged and adjusted in this world by 
divine Providence that the mighty forces of com- 
merce, when left to themselves, move as evenly and 
truly as the tides of the ocean or the courses of the 
stars. Through all the great avenues and channels 
of trade, flows, with steady and majestic pulse beat, 
that which ever contributes to the calm health of 
nations. Now, if instead of regularity there is a fitful 
flow or obstruction ; if instead of health there is dis- 
ease, then we may know that the evil agency of man 
is here disturbing the currents of this great circula- 
tion. And so we have here, through such untoward 



292 THE farmers' movement. 

agency, this unhealthy action in the body politic, this 
disturbance of the true relations between capital and 
labor, between the producing interests and the other 
commercial interests. The forms and symptoms of 
this great public disease are many and various. Here 
the arm of industry is withered and paralyzed ; there 
the life blood of trade is stagnant. Here, at the 
extremities, among the poorer classes, the circulation 
is feeble and fluctuating ; there, to the center and the 
head, is a flow that threatens congestion. The poor 
are growing poorer, the rich are growing richer ; and 
all over and everywhere in the land are monopolies 
and rings and unhealthy combinations of men prey- 
ing upon their neighbors. 

THE REMEDY — WHERE IT MUST BE FOUND. 

Now what is the remedy for this state of things .'' 
To follow and complete the figure, I would say restore 
the circulation ; remove the disturbing causes ; put 
things back in the old and healthy channels ; let the 
life blood of trade flow back from the engorged 
centers to the wasted extremities. 

But how can this be done .' That is a practical 
question, and demands a practical answer. Some 
men say that it can not be answered : that it can not 
be done ; that it is above the power of man, and that 
the whole thing must be left to work itself clear by 
the operation of laws which are beyond the reach 
alike of legislation and of public opinion. Still others 
claim that it can be done speedily and summarily by 
acts of Congress and the legislatures, and by the 
co-operation of the farmers themselves. 

Now I think in this matter, as in so many others, 



THE farmers' movement. 293 

the truth will be found somewhere between these 
extreme positions. In the first place, the mischief is 
deep seated ; it has been some time in coming on, 
and it will take time to eradicate it. It can not be 
done in a day. And then I think it will take the law, 
and public opinion, and co-operation all combined, to 
bring about the remedy. It may not need much in 
the way of resort to the legislative power ; it may 
not be the best policy to bring on a contest and a 
conflict in the legislatures and the courts with the 
railroad power on the question of transportation, but 
the weapons of the law should not be entirely thrown 
away. They should be held in reserve, at least, to 
be used when necessary. 

THE REMEDY OF TFIE LAW — A REPLY TO 
CHAS. FRANCIS ADAMS, JR. 

A gentleman bearing a historic name, and worthily 
upholding, in the fourth generatiQn, the honors of an 
illustrious family, himself a railroad commissioner 
and an authority on this subject, has lately given it 
as his mature conviction that the law is entirely 
powerless to control railroad corporations, and that 
the only remedy for any wrongs they may commit 
must be found in public opinion. Not the statutes, 
but publicity, he says, is the true and effectual 
weapon, the best corrective and constable. It is 
true Mr. Adams spoke in Wisconsin, where the Potter 
law, a perhaps too violent legal remedy, has been 
applied ; and he comes from Massachusetts, where 
public opinion may have more than its wonted power 
and authority. But with all deference to his large^ 
intelligence and his ample experience in this matter- 



294 THE farmers' movement. 

I must take issue with him on the proposition which 
he so broadly states. I know the question is hardly 
a practical one here in Michigan, where no contest 
is likely to occur with the railroads, but I must pro- 
test against the principle that the railroad power 
is above and beyond the law. That is a startling 
proposition in a republic like ours. Railroads, while 
owned by stock companies and corporations as pri- 
vate property, in a larger and broader sense belong 
to the whole people. When I say people, I mean the 
State, which has the right of eminent domain, and 
which gives the franchise in the first instance to the 
railroad corporations. It will hardly do, I appre- 
hend, to say that the corporation is greater and 
stronger than the State which has breathed into it 
the breath of life. 

I am not contending here for any given meas- 
ure of power, for any particular degree of regulation, 
much less for any proposition to do away with or dis- 
turb vested rights ; but for the broad right of the 
people, through constitutional provisions and stat- 
utes, to hold the railroad power amenable to them, 
to be exercised within the limits which they shall 
set, and in a manner not to be unjust or oppressive 
to any commercial interest or industry of the State. 
To say that this power does not reside in the State, 
and can not be exercised if occasion shall arise, is to 
confess the utter impotence of the law-making de- 
partment to protect the people, and, logically, to pre- 
pare the way for a complete surrender of everything 
to the great railroad corporations. Indeed, Mr. 
Adams himself, with refreshing but startling frank- 
ness, suggests this surrender when he holds this 
remarkable language : 



THE farmers' movement. 295 

"See how Scott, and Garrett, and Vanderbilt are 
developing, each in his own way, but goaded on by 
the others, the great, universal, irresistible law of 
railroad concentration : how ludicrously impotent 
your statutes, and even your constitutional provisos, 
are to impede, or even hamper them ; and how 
steadily, unitedly, and yet unconsciously, they work 
toward that unity, which some successor of theirs, 
in the next generation, perhaps, will accomplish. 
What will then result .'' Our political philosopher 
perhaps might foretell ; I certainly can not. Of one 
thing only do I feel convinced, and that is that 
through law or over laws, by developing existing 
political systems, or by gradually substituting others 
in place of them, in this generation or in the next, 
somehow or in some way, the government and the 
concentrated railroad system of the future must and 
will come together and merge in each other." 

And what is it that the succe,ssor of Scott and 
Garrett and Vanderbilt in the next generation is to 
accomplish over our laws and our ludicrously im- 
potent statutes.' And what is meant by the merg- 
ing of the concentrated railroad system and the 
government with each other ? Does Mr. Adams 
mean that this government is to have a railroad king 
in the next generation ? Is this the terrible sugges- 
tion, half concealed in the phrase, "by developing 
existing political systems, or by gradually substitut- 
ing others in place of them .''" Surely Mr. Adams is 
talking wildly here, for this is a sad centennial out- 
look for the great-grandson of the champion of 
American independence. 

Now, fellow citizens, making all due allowance for 



296 THE farmers' movement. 

the extravagance of rhetoric, and for careless use of 
language, I think I find in this utterance of Mr. 
Adams a most dangerous doctrine, which it will not 
do for Americans in any way to countenance. Ours 
is a poor political system indeed, and weak in its 
central part and its vital essence, if it does not pos- 
sess the power to protect the people from railroad 
tyranny and extortion; if railroads can run over our 
statutes and through our constitutions at will. And 
we have come to a sorry pass if our only hope in 
such dire emergency is public opinion and moral 
suasion ; if our railroad commissioners, instead of 
being armed with the power of the law to compel 
justice, must be sent as simple missionaries to these 
railroad magnates, humbly imploring them to refrain 
from public outrage. No, no. Such a doctrine as 
that will never do. When a power like that springs 
up in the government, it ceases to be a government, 
because it can not govern. 

There was once a venerable president of the 
United States, who, in a great crisis of our history, 
announced the doctrine that the government had no 
power to coerce a State or prevent secession. But 
the people had no idea of letting the government go 
to pieces on such a fallacy as that ; they found a 
power, which, after four years of terrible struggle, 
crushed secession and rebellion, and the name of 
that poor old president will be forever pilloried in 
history as the author of the lame and impotent, if not 
treasonable, conclusion that the government had not 
the power to defend its own life ; had not the legal 
and constitutional right to punish its enemies and 
vindicate its authority. 



THE farmers' movement. 297 

So let us have no such preposterous doctrine in 
reference to the railroad power. The government 
has the same right to protect itself against that as it 
had against secession. Slavery tried to be king in 
this country, and to set itself above the law ; but it 
went down before the indignant patriotism of the 
people, and tlied in a sea of blood. So let it be with 
any other power which shall defy the law, and under- 
take to trample on the Constitution. We have no 
room or place for kings or oligarchs in this country, 
whether of slavery or money. The people are the 
only masters here. 

But if we must have a king, I should pray that it 
be not Scott, or Garrett, or Vanderbilt. (iive us a 
king who is kingly, one who represents the historic 
idea and state of kingship ; give us no vulgar money 
king. Better the old pope, with his mitered bishops 
and cardinals, his tiara on his head, and his long 
succession from St. Peter with its mingled historic 
glory and shame, lit up with the blaze of sacrifice 
and fete and burning stake, and solemn and grand 
with the pomp and music of great cathedrals ; better 
the crown and scepter of an emperor which shall 
represent a thousand years of history and the high 
state and circumstance of royalty, with its tourna- 
ments and pageants and wars, than the upstart sway 
of a vulgar dynasty founded upon money alone ! 

BUT OTHER QUESTIONS MOKE IMPORTANT — BANKS, 
TAXATION, AND GENERAL EXTRAVAGANCE. 

Now, fellow citizens, I am glad to know that this 
question is largely an abstraction ; and that here in 
our own State, at least, there is no immediate dan- 



298 THE farmers' movement. 

ger of any collision with the railroads, which I 
understand are carrying the farmers' produce at 
comparatively just and reasonable rates. So the 
question of transportation is not giving our farmers 
here any serious trouble. 

As to the middlemen, you are applying somewhat 
the remedy of co-operation, which perhaps is well 
I certainly see no reason why farmers should not 
have the right to buy and sell for themselves if they 
desire, and nobody has any business to complain if 
the farmers can make better bargains, and are satis- 
fied. This is a free country, and if the middlemen 
lose employment by this system of co-operation they 
must turn their hands to something else. There is 
plenty to do in the world. But I can not look upon 
this matter of the middlemen and their charges as 
so important to farmers as do some others. After all, 
I apprehend there is a convenience if not a necessity 
in the old system ; and where the work is done, the 
middleman is entitled to his percentage, as every 
man to a just reward for his labor. 

It seems to me that the questions pertaining to 
our banking system, to the high rates of interest for 
money, to our taxation, the general extravagance of 
our people, and the recklessness of our legislation 
are the most important that can engage the atten- 
tion of farmers at this time, and that call most loudly 
upon all good citizens for a remedy. It is these 
which are the most prolific breeders of monopolies ; 
it is these which spoil the farmers' market at one 
end of the line, and keep him from just returns for 
his labor, while they devour and eat away the little 
substance which he has by interest and taxation at 



THE farmers' movement. 299 

the other. They do not, it is true, accomplish this 
directly, but they are the causes which produce the 
evil state of things which is felt on every hand. Out 
of this evil condition of things, which can be felt 
better than it can be described, grow rings and com- 
binations and monopolies, political and commercial. 
It is a morbid and unhealthy state, which needs to 
be changed as soon as possible for the old and health- 
ful ways. 

Now, to accomplish this change, to return to a bet- 
ter state of things, is a great work which imperatively 
demands the co-operation of all good citizens. In 
this work I would call in legislation when it is 
needed, I would arouse public opinion, and I would 
use all the influences, moral and political, that can 
be brought to bear upon law-makers and politicians, 
upon railroad officers and bank officers, — upon all 
who by reason of authority or by force of pretension 
are in any way responsible for the evils under which 
the community groans and suffers. The gods help 
those who help themselves. When we have done 
all we can do, then we may charge the rest to 
fate. 

WHAT THE FARMERS CAN DO — THEIR 
POLITICAL POWER. 

And now what, in this needed work, can this great 
farmers' organization do ? I think it can do much ; 
that if wisely directed it can largely right its own 
wrongs, and help to purify the political and business 
atmosphere around us. I certainly hope that it will 
use its utmost power to break up every corrupt 
political ring and every unjust business monopoly in 



300 THE farmers' movement. 

the State. For one, I will bid it Godspeed while it is 
doing this. We do not want any rings and monop- 
olies in the State. Down with them, wherever they 
are. They are the' chief and worst enemies of the 
republic and of popular liberty. I know the grange 
is not a political, partisan organization, and it does 
not need to be for this purpose, for it will be found 
to be true that both parties and all parties are liable 
to be corrupt, and to put forward unprincipled and 
corrupt men as candidates for popular suffrage. 
Grangers are citizens and voters, and it is here that 
they can help themselves and help the State by 
voting down unprincipled and corrupt men, no mat- 
ter who puts them up. In this sense the grange 
should be, and, I take it, is, a political power. At 
all events, many of our worst politicians have had 
some reason to think so, in these recent years. So I 
say. one of the best uses of the grange, and one of 
the plainest duties of farmers, is to assist in purify- 
ing our politics, the bad and dangerous source from 
which flow so many of our public ills. They need 
not do this as partisans, — that would not help the 
matter, — but as independent citizens, looking to 
nothing but the good of the State and country. 

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PICTURE — ABUSES 
OF THE MOVEMENT. 

Fellow citizens, let me turn now to the other side 
of the picture, and speak to you of some of the pos- 
sible abuses of the farmers' movement. As I have 
no ends to serve but those of truth and justice, let 
me speak frankly and plainly. While I believe that 
this great organization of farmers in the country is. 



THE farmers' movement. 301 

in the main a good one, promising, if conducted on 
right principles, to accomi)lish great, necessary, and 
beneficent objects, yet I think I can see, also, that i( 
it shall yield to bad counsels or leadership, and be 
hurried to overzeal and injustice, it may become a 
powerful engine of public mischief, defeating its own 
professed objects, and coming to be at last a hin- 
drance and menace to the country. Then the 
stronger it shall be the worse it will be. Instead ot 
helping the country out of its difficulties, commer- 
cial and political, it will only serve to sink us deeper 
and deeper into trouble. So great is the difference 
between power directed to just ends and controlled 
by wise counsels, and power perverted to bad and 
unjust ends and controlled by unwise and evil 
counsels. 

INJUSTICE TO RAILROADS. 

Now there are some dangers to which this farm- 
ers' organization is plainly exposed. In the first 
place it is liable, naturally liable, to do some injus- 
tice to the railroads and the railroad interests. This 
would come about, naturally, by the farmers looking 
exclusively, from the point of self-interest, to one 
side of the question. That side, of course, would be 
their side, and as they feel keenly the difficulties and 
embarrassments under which they suffer, their own 
want of just return for their labor, the pinching of 
hard times, and the heavy hand of taxation, the tend- 
ency is to lay too much blame upon the railroads 
as the cause of all this by reason of their high rates 
for transportation and their combinations to prevent 
competition in the carrying trade. 



302 THE farmers' movement. 

I think there is an element of justice in this com- 
plaint against the railroads, and that their great and 
growing power needs to be checked somewhat and 
carefully guarded, especially as the tendency is all 
the time to railroad concentration and monopoly. 
But let us not be unreasonable or unjust. Railroads 
not only have their great and beneficent uses, but 
they have their rights as well as the farmers. These 
should be scrupulously protected. The vested rights 
of a railroad corporation should be held as sacred as 
any other rights under the law. No war should be 
made upon them ; no prejudice should be excited 
against them. I need not tell you how important 
railroads are to our commerce and our civilization. 
It would be almost impossible for human speech to 
exaggerate their importance. Where and what would 
we be with every railroad track in the country torn 
up, and we remanded to the condition of things 
which existed fifty years ago .^ How would we like 
that ? See then what untold, incalculable benefit 
the railroads have been to the country, and espe- 
cially to the West. This mighty railroad system in 
the West, reaching to the shores of the Pacific, and 
penetrating to every important town and center, is 
the great civilizer, the most potent and powerful 
agent in the development of our resources and our 
prosperity. 

And to no class is this agent more important and 
beneficial than to the farming class. Farmers, you 
of all others must depend upon railroads. You can 
not get along without them. They are the great 
equalizers and supporters of your market. Before 
this vast system of railroads, you were at the mercy 



THE FARMERS' MOVEMENT. 303 

of local fluctuations. You had no steady, certain 
market. One year your grain would command a fair 
price, the next there would be a local surfeit, the 
crops could not be moved, and the price would drop 
down to comparatively nothing. Now this is no 
longer so. The railroads have become the great dis- 
tributors and equalizers, and your markets com- 
mand the general average of the country and the 
civilized world. 

INJUSTICE TO THE MIDDLEMEN. 

Again, there is danger that this movement may be 
carried to unjust lengths against what are termed 
the middlemen. I imagine it will always be found 
in our political economy that some hands will be 
needed between the producing class and the con- 
suming class, and this will make it necessary that 
there should be some middlemen. The farmers will 
never be able to dispense entirely with this class. 
They may lessen its numbers as they apply the prin- 
ciple of co-operation, but they will find it inconven- 
ient if not impossible to sell all their commodities 
directly to the last market, and much more inconven- 
ient to make all their purchases of the manufac- 
tures in the wholesale market. That will be found 
to be too great a burden for them, and it will be too 
great a revolution and innovation in the immemorial 
ways and methods of trade. I imagine the retail 
dealer and shopkeeper will never be entirely abol- 
ished, and so long as he stays we should use him 
well, if he behaves himself. The farmers themselves 
will find this class of middlemen too useful and con- 
venient to make indiscriminate war upon them. In 



304 THE FAR>rERS' MOVEMENT. 

the sharp competition that prevails about them, they 
are not likely to amass any very enormous or unjust 
gains out of the farmers or anybody else. 

THE DANGER FROM CLASS PREJUDICE AND 
THE INFLUENCE OF DEMAGOOUES. 

But a greater danger still to the farmers' move- 
ment, and the greatest abuse into which it is likely 
to fall, is the inculcation of a wrong, senseless, and 
unjust class prejudice. I wish to speak plainly upon 
this point, for I deem it one of very great impor- 
tance. You can not have such a movement as this 
among the farmers, founded upon a complaint of 
great injustice and goaded on by a prevailing sense 
of wrong done to them in some way by other classes 
of the community, without a constant danger to 
overzeal and exaggeration. And you can not. in 
the very nature of things, have a movement of such 
magnitude and proportions as this without its con- 
taining some overzealous and fanatical men who will 
assume to be leaders, and constantly keep fanning 
and inflaming this tendency to feeling and prejudice 
against other classes, and especially what are called 
the upper or ruling classes in the community. 
Joined with these men, in this unfortunate work, 
will be another class of leaders not so honest but 
equally pernicious, — demagogues, farmer dema- 
gogues, — who seek to ride into prominence and 
office on the back of the grange, and who will travel 
about from grange to grange and from county to 
county prating of the wrongs of the farmers and the 
outrages upon their rights, and continually stirring 
up and harrowing the minds of their hearers by con- 



THE farmers' movement. 305 

trasting their condition with that of the other classes 
and the people in the cities and towns, — lawyers 
and merchants and men of leisure who live in ele- 
gant houses, fare sumptuously, cut off coupons, and 
draw official salaries ! 

Now, fellow citizens, farmers, this is foolish and 
dangerous talk, and these are foolish and dangerous 
men. They wrong you and they wrong us who are 
not farmers. I beg you not to believe what they 
say. They are doing you a great injury every day. 
Prejudice begets prejudice, feeling begets feeling, 
and these men have already succeeded in calling out 
a counter prejudice which is and will be one of the 
chief obstacles against which the farmers' movement 
must hereafter contend. Nobody whose opinion is 
worth anything has any other feelings but those of 
good will and respect for the farming class. Nobody 
wishes to oppress them, nobody feels above them. 

On the contrary just the opposite feeling prevails 
among the other classes of the community. I am 
almost ashamed to talk of this subject, these things 
look so paltry, senseless, and foolish. Why, it is the 
highest ambition of the professional man and the 
business man some day to become a farmer, even if 
it be on a small scale ; and to own and occupy a 
little piece of God's green earth, where he can 
breathe the pure air of heaven, and drink in the 
deep and healthful inspirations of nature. Many of 
these men, against whom it is sought to array this 
senseless prejudice, are farmers' sons, whose early 
life and associations were on the farm, and who look 
back to those early days with the tenderest of 
human feelings. Will such a man despise the 
20 



306 THE farmers' movement. 

farmer, or cease to sympathize with him ? When 
in the hot strife and bustle of the town, engaged in 
the contentions of professional life or the rivalries 
of business, with head heated and heart weighted 
with responsibility, or stung by man's selfishness or 
ingratitude, he walks the hard and narrow pavement, 
how will his memory go back to the days of his 
boyhood, and how will he long to live them over 
again and exult in their boundless freedom and 
peace ! 

No, fellow citizens, this class feeling on the part 
of the farmers is as uncalled for as it is dangerous. 
The men of the cities and the towns, the men of 
other vocations and callings, are not the farmer's 
enemies, lying in wait for his destruction. They 
are, rather, his friends and co-laborers in the great 
work of the world, — work of head and hand and 
brain and muscle, — as necessary to him as he to 
them. This is the beautiful, divine ordination that 
men are made to fill every useful calling, and what- 
ever is useful is honorable. To the lot of the farmer 
has fallen a labor of primal dignity and usefulness, 
and no man on God's earth can hold his head above 
him. 

And then we are a republic ; we have no favored 
classes ; all men are equal before the law. Its 
privileges and its blessings are open to all alike. 
But I hear it said, the farmers are denied their share 
of the offices. Well, I do not know about that. I 
do not know as anybody is entitled to an office in 
this country. The theory is that ofifices are duties, 
rather than perquisites ; but certainly, if a farmer, is 



THE farmers' movement. 307 

better fitted to discharge the duties of an office than 
his neighbor, he ought to have it. If you have in 
this congressional district, as perhaps you have, a 
farmer who is better fitted and qualified to represent 
you in Congress than the merchant or lawyer, then 
by all means send him ; but do not send him simply 
because he is a farmer. Men ought to be sent to 
Congress or put into high public positions because 
of their qualifications, and not because of their busi- 
ness. In this sense farmers ought to have their 
share of the offices, and I think it is no small share 
that they are fitted to hold. But there is no occa- 
sion for feeling or prejudice on this point, for I have 
never known a time in our politics when farmers 
were not thought the most available candidates for 
office. This is a small question, and ought never to 
have been raised. It can be safely left, I think, to 
the solid good sense of the great body of farmers 
who are not asking or seeking for office themselves, 
and who will judge wisely of the qualifications of all 
candidates presented for their suffrage. Away, then, 
with this whole matter of class jealousy and preju- 
dice. There is no need of it, we have no room for 
it ; it ought never to be mentioned. I pray you, 
farmers, turn a deaf ear to every man who shall try 
to incite you to it. Distrust any counsels, from 
whatever quarter, that shall have a tendency to 
build up in this free country any walls of prejudice 
between one class and another, or provoke any 
senseless opposition and bitterness between neigh- 
bors and friends. 



308 THE farmers' movement. 

some of the true conditions of the 
farmers' prosperity. 

And now what are the true and just conditions of 
the real prosperity and advancement of the farming 
class ? Let me glance at some of them very briefly. 
First, what of the national conditions .'' In consider- 
ing these, let it never be forgotten or lost sight of 
that, as a rule, the conditions which make the pros- 
perity of one class make the prosperity of all classes. 
I mean, of course, all honest classes. There is a great 
sympathy of industries, by which if one suffers all 
suffer. The State that is well and strong must 
have, like the well and strong man, healthy and 
perfect members. If any are diseased or paralyzed, 
the whole body suffers. So, in this matter, the 
farming interest needs just what every interest 
needs, just what we all need, — national health. 

As a nation we are still suffering from the effects, 
the inevitable derangements, of our recent great 
civil convulsion. A state of war is an unhealthy 
state, as you know, a state of fever and paroxysm ; 
and a great civil war, especially, is a violent and 
terrible shock to a people whose true prosperity 
consists in peace and orderly industry. From this 
great shock of the war we have not yet recovered. 
The commercial derangements have not yet been 
arranged and smoothed into order, the broken 
threads have not yet been mended, the perturbed 
elements have not yet calmed and settled. Not 
until we get rid of this legacy of the rebellion shall 
we have serene peace and calm national health. 



THE farmers' movement. 309 

A SOUND CURRENCY — NO INFLATION. 

We have, as a natural fruit of the war, an impaired 
and unsettled national currency. One of our first 
needs is to restore this to a sound and permanent 
basis, to the old basis which existed before the war. 
I believe it to be one of the greatest and first condi- 
tions of national health and prosperity to retrace our 
steps in this matter of the currency, — steps which 
the terrible necessities and emergencies of the war 
compelled us to take, — and return as soon as possible 
to the old and safe ways and to the solid foundation 
of specie payment. I know this is not a political 
gathering, and I am not making a political speech, 
but I can not forget that I am speaking to an audi- 
ence of farmers ; and farmers, of all men in the coun- 
try, are interested in the question of a safe and stable 
currency. I believe if our feet are taken off the solid 
rock of gold and silver, we shall, be drifted away into 
a sea of untold disasters and troubles ; and you farmers 
will suffer as much as anybody. There can be no 
real prosperity for you or for anybody builded upon 
inflation. However beautiful and inviting it may be 
pictured, it is an airy, unsubstantial structure, and 
will finally vanish away. 

What you want is something reliable, something 
permanent, something which shall beget confidence. 
Remember that if inflation shall raise the prices of 
your farms and commodities, that this is only specious 
and illusory, for the bubbles of inflated values will be 
blown all around you, and what you buy will go up 
with what you sell. And remember, further, what 
the history of this matter teaches, that you will be 



310 THE FARMERS' MOVEMENT. 

the greatest sufiferers when the inevitable collapse 
shall come. Your values will be the last to go up 
and the first to come down, and thus you will be 
made the football of fortune in this great game of fast 
and loose. No, fellow citizens of the farming class 
you, most of all, need to cling to the ancient and safe 
ways, to the honest and unalterable standard of values 
which all Christendom recognizes and all history 
approves. 

FREE BANKING — NO MONOPOLY. 

And with such a currency, I believe, should go the 
principle of free banking and no bank monopolies. 
That is the only true rule in a republic. There 
should be no favors shown by the government to any 
class, and no privileges dealt out to any set of men 
which are not free to all others. Our national bank 
system, I think, has violated this principle of equality, 
which should be held sacred, and has tended to build 
up a monopoly with especial privileges to a class. 
This has had its evil effects which you, farmers, have 
felt. Let it be entirely rectified and the whole interest 
question adjusted upon a fair, even, and equitable 
basis. 

PUBLIC HONESTY, COMPETENCY, AND SIMPLICITY. 

But back of these ^needs is another one of great 
importance, — perhaps I should say of first impor- 
tance, — the need of sterling honesty, competency, 
and economy in our public affairs. We need to 
return to a gold basis here, also. Here the farmers 
suffer with all the other honest classes and industries, 
and here they need with us all, as a prime condition 



THE FARMERS' MOVEMENT. 311 

to prosperity, a true and genuine reform in our pub- 
lic ways. We have inherited from the war and its 
natural outgrowth a wild spirit of speculation and 
extravagance, a haste to be rich without reference to 
the means, and this has bred recklessness, dishonesty, 
and corruption in our legislation and our public life. 
I speak here, not as a partisan, but as a citizen. No 
party is entirely free from the taint of corruption. 
We need to watch both parties and all parties with 
ceaseless vigilance. How many of our public ills 
under which farmers, and indeed all the people, groan 
and suffer could be traced directly to this prolific 
source of public extravagance and corruption. Our 
currency evils, our banking and interest evils, our 
grinding taxation, our general commercial derange- 
ment, and our paralyzed trade and industry, — all these 
have largely if not chiefly come from the want of true 
statesmanship and a rigidly honest and economical 
administration of our public affairs. 

Now the remedy is plain. It must be a true and 
genuine civil service reform, beginning at the head 
and working clear through every department of the 
government. Here again I speak not as a partisan, 
but as an independent citizen, owing no allegiance to 
any party but the party of the public good. But do 
I not speak truly .'' I appeal to Republicans and 
Democrats alike, have we not need of political reform ? 
Is it not at this moment one of the first needs of 
the country, and one of the truest conditions of our 
future national prosperity .'' I trust the farmers, to 
whichever party they may belong, will watch the 
politicians, and insist by their influence and their 
votes that the public interests shall be well and 



312 THE farmers' movement. 

sacredly guarded by those in power; that the pub- 
lic substance shall not be wasted, nor the public wel- 
fare imperiled by incompetent or dishonest public 
servants. 

We need especially among our public men, a return 
to the simple and more democratic ways of the fathers 
and the early statesmen of the republic. Extrava- 
gant living by our senators and representatives and 
our high officials sets a bad example to the people, 
leads to temptations inconsistent with the purity of 
legislation, and tends all the time to supplant and do 
away with that simplicity which is one of the chief 
glories of democratic institutions. Seventy-four 
years ago, at the opening of the century, when the 
government was young, one of the greatest of our 
presidents rode on horseback to his inaugural, and 
quietly hitched his horse to the capitol fence before 
the ceremony began. That was Thomas Jefferson, 
the author of our Declaration of Independence, and 
the profoundest philosopher of our new political sys- 
tem of self-government. His example could be 
studied with profit by some of our so-called states- 
men of to-day, who like to ride and live in kingly 
state and extravagance. 

WHAT FARMERS THEMSELVES MAY DO. 

But some of these conditions so essential to the 
farmer's prosperity and advancement, are under his 
own exclusive control. They pertain to a field which 
he alone may cultivate, free from all outside inter- 
ference or restraint. I refer here to his individual, 
personal duties and privileges, — the duties and privi- 
leges of his home and his neighborhood. Here is a 



THE FARMERS' MOVEMENT. 313 

great field and opportunity for improvement, and the 
grange will help him in his efforts. I have already 
spoken of the beautiful social feature of the organiza- 
tion. Nothing could be more fit and useful than 
this. The grange picnics and public gatherings are 
wholly admirable. 

I think our farmers do not fully improve their 
opportunities to better their social and intellectual 
condition. They work too hard ; they cultivate 
more land than they need ; they read and enjoy 
themselves too little ; they cheat themselves out of 
the best things of life ; they should work less and 
manage more — it will pay better. A good farmer 
should not be his own hired man, and drudge his life 
out with hard work. He should take time for rest, 
keep up his spirits, read, calculate, plan, and make 
good bargains ; and more than all, he should not 
neglect the higher social and intellectual enjoyments. 
Let him keep up his home and beautify it ; fill it 
with music for his daughters, and make it attractive 
for his sons — so attractive that they will not want to 
leave it, to go and be clerks and paid servants in the 
towns. There is not attention enough paid in this 
Western country to this matter of the home and the 
home feeling. Our homes are the true foundations 
of the State, the true nurseries of all the great and 
holy things of life. That nation is the strongest 
where the home feeling is the deepest. Here, I think. 
is the chief secret of the power of England. The 
Englishman, unlike the Frenchman, is attached to his 
home ; and largely for this reason that little island 
in the sea is the center of the world's civilization and 
power. 



314 THE farmers' movement. 

There is no reason in the world why our farmers 
should not exercise a great social and political influ- 
ence in the State. They occupy a really command- 
ing position, a position corresponding to that of the 
landed gentry in England. If they would really 
think so, our farmers are far better off than the busi- 
ness and tradesmen class in our towns. How small 
the proportion of these that ultimately succeed and 
escape bankruptcy, and how slavish and exacting is 
their daily work. Whatever else may happen, the 
farmer need not fail in business. He has the solid 
earth beneath him to stand upon, and the great com- 
mercial storms and disasters which sweep over the 
country, toppling down the great fortunes of trade 
and the lofty business structures, leave him still un- 
scathed, the last sure bulwark and stronghold of the 
State. 

CONCLUSION. 

Farmers and citizens : the cry of our burdened 
industries for relief is a just cry, and should pene- 
trate the ears of the nation. Lord Bacon says, with 
sententious wisdom, "A people burdened with tribute 
is unfit for empire." The farmers' movement is but a 
great organized effort to shake off burdens too griev- 
ous longer to be borne. The founders of our repub- 
lic one hundred years ago refused to pay the tribute 
to King George, and to-day we boast ourselves a 
nation of freemen, — a nation which would redden 
the sea with blood before it would pay one cent of 
tribute to any foreign power under the sun. Let us 
see to it that no class or industry in our own midst 
shall be required to pay tribute to any other. 



THE farmers' movement. 815 

. Plato, in his ideal republic, while making the 
State supreme, and merging in it all the interests of 
individual and domestic life, exalts Justice as the 
great controlling and harmonizing principle which 
runs through and regulates its every department and 
holds it together. Such justice in the State I invoke 
for the farmers and their cause. Not the blind jus- 
tice of the courthouse and the law, which is simply- 
impartial, but that active spirit of justice which is 
star-eyed and all pervading ; which lifts up the lowly 
and. pulls downs the proud and haughty; which 
lightens the burdens of labor and wrests from the 
hands of unrighteous power its ill-gotten gains ; 
which exalts every industry and levels every mo- 
nopoly. 

Give us such justice as this to go hand in hand 
with our freedom and our great progress, and we 
will build on these Western shores a government of 
fairer, more symmetrical, and more majestic propor- 
tions, even, than that lofty and severe ideal structure 
whose glowing and immortal conception filled the 
soul of the grand old Greek. 



PATRICK HENRY. 



Ladies and Gentlemen : I am to speak to you 
this evening of one of the purest patriots of our 
country and one of the most wonderful orators of 
the world. In these centennial days as our eyes 
turn with quickened interest to the actors in the 
drama of the Revolution, three imposing figures 
stand out upon the scene — Washington, Jefferson, 
and Patrick Henry. Other great actors and figures 
there were, but these stand pre-eminent. Looking 
at them in the order of their service, Thomas Jeffer- 
son was the political thinker and writer of the Revo- 
lution, and wielded its pen — the pen which wrote 
its immortal declaration ; Patrick Henry was its 
great and inspired orator, and spoke its voice in 
words of thrilling power which reached the ears of 
the world, and will forever echo in history ; while 
George Washington was the great leader of its 
armies, who unsheathed its sword, and executed its 
stern but just decrees. Immortal triumvirate ! Never 
were pen and voice and sword used more loftily and 
unselfishly in the great cause of human freedom. 

It is my purpose now to recall for a brief hour the 
majestic presence of the great orator of the Revolu- 
tion — to make him pass before our vision as he 



' A Centennial Lecture, delivered at Chicago, Detroit, and other 
Michigan cities. 
316 



PATRICK HENRY. 317 

appeared in the flesh one hundred years ago ; to see 
his lofty port ; to catch the flash of his eagle eye, 
and to hear the accents of that thrilling voice which 
sent the holy fires of patriotism and liberty through 
every nerve of the men of '76. 

GREAT CHARACTERS PRODUCED IN REVOLU- 
TIONARY EPOCHS. 

Patrick Henry has been well styled the orator of 
nature and the child of the Revolution. No ordi- 
nary, peaceful times, indeed, could have produced 
him. It is one of the striking peculiarities of revolu- 
tions that they develop great men, and throw to the 
surface of affairs strong and great characters. There 
are plain reasons for this. Revolutions are mighty 
upheavals of society, powerful agitations of the state, 
in which the people, stirred with contending pas- 
sions, with alternating hopes and fears, instinctively 
turn to their natural leaders, to -the born kings of 
men. In such times there is no place for weak, 
timid, or cowardly public men. They who can not 
ride the storm must fall before it. The small, com- 
monplace men, with their routine ways, who manage 
tolerably well in peaceful times, are now sent to the 
rear, and the men with the strong arms and heroic 
souls are called to the front. When the ship rides 
in calm waters and on peaceful seas, only ordinary 
skill may guide her, but when the winds rave and 
the waves are lashed into fury, then supreme skill 
and lofty courage are needed. 

So, also, in these Revolutionary periods, there is 
ordinarily an upheaval from the bottom of society, 



31 S PATRICK HENRY. 

and, for a time, a leveling of all class distinctions. 
The common peril and purpose obliterate all artifi- 
cial divisions, and the leaders come from every rank 
and condition. Sometimes they come from the lower 
orders, like Robespierre and Danton ; now from the 
sturdy middle class, like Hampden and Cromwell ; 
again from the aristocracy and nobility, like Mira- 
beau and Lafayette. They need no other creden- 
tials of leadership save those which God has given 
them in superior endowments of mind and soul. 

But these upheavals not only throw these great 
characters to the surface ; they furnish grand oppor- 
tunities to them. Revolutions are the tableaux of 
history. Their scenes and actors are illuminated 
with a thousand converging rays of historic light, 
and stand out with vivid distinctness against the 
historic background. They do not come on sud- 
denly ; their bolts do not fall from a clear sky. The 
final culmination of arms is always preceded by 
moral efforts and struggles ; the conflict of ideas 
precedes that of bullets. Always there is at the 
foundation a deep sense of wrong which produces 
protests and remonstrances against the governing 
power, and an appeal to the reason and conscience 
of men. Here the orator comes in and plays his 
part before the soldier is called into action. This 
was the case in our own Revolution ; it was so also 
in the great French Revolution. Every great strug- 
gle of this kind has had its orators who have put its 
protests and demands into burning words and pleaded 
its cause at the great bar of history. It is in such 
times and at such crises that eloquence has reached 
its highest power and made its most splendid exhi- 



PATRICK HENRY. 319 

bitions. How could it be otherwise ? Kloquence is 
born out of excitement and passion, and when the 
orator speaks for millions of men around him who are 
swayed by tremendous feeling and all on fire with 
popular excitement, it is natural that his words 
should be all aflame and instinct with terrible energy 
and intensity. It is then that eloquence clothes itself 
with the thunder and the lightning and becomes 
godlike. Mirabeau, in the French Assembly, swaying 
that tumultuous body at will, and Patrick Henry, in 
the Virginia Convention, overawing the majority and 
bending them to his great purpose of resistance, were 
something more than mortal men to behold. Men 
instinctively bow before such demigods, and obey 
their voice as they would a voice from heaven. Such 
is the commanding power of eloquence when it speaks 
through the mouths of its great masters in the su- 
preme crises of the state. 

PATRICK HENRY BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 
— HIS BOYHOOD AND YOUTH. 

I do not propose to give you a narrative of the life 
of Patrick Henry, or to follow even in connected 
order the outlines of his history. This would be out- 
side of my purpose and entirely unnecessary ; for 
every intelligent schoolboy knows his biography. 
In the brief time at my command I shall attempt 
rather to sketch the character of this extraordinary 
man and to dwell upon the exhibitions of that won- 
derful eloquence which made him the most powerful 
advocate of independence and which has scarcely a 
parallel in history. 

The boyhood of great men does not always differ 



320 PATRICK HENRY. 

from that of men of common mold. All men are 
much alike in their infancy, and there is no certain 
sign by which future greatness can be predicted. 
Precocity is indeed an abnormal condition, and the 
promises of genius are frequently broken. There is 
no certain criterion here. Sometimes the fire flames 
up in early youth only to go out in sudden darkness, 
the pitcher broken at the fountain, as in the case of 
the marvelous boy Chatterton ; sometimes the early 
promise ripens into golden and long fulfillment, as 
with our own venerable poet Bryant ; again great- 
ness lies hidden in common life until it flowers sud- 
denly out after forty years, as in the lives of Crom- 
well and Washington. 

The early years of Patrick Henry were without 
any sign of his future distinction. The fires of his 
genius were hidden beneath a most unpromising 
boyhood. Born of the yeoman or middle class, he 
had such advantages for education as fell to the lot 
of other lads in that early provincial society. Per- 
haps I should say that his lot was better in one 
respect, for his father was a man of liberal education, 
besides being a magistrate and a person of excellent 
standing and repute in his county. But the father 
had eight other children to provide for, and while he 
sought to instill knowledge and the love of learning 
into the mind of his second son, he had no patri- 
mony with which to endow him, no fortune to 
bequeath to him, which should lift him above the 
necessity of earning his daily bread. The boy grew 
up without improving the few advantages which he 
had. He was not undutiful or vicious, but he was 
unstudious, ignorant, and idle. He would not, or 



PATRICK HENRY. 321 

could not, learn. The open book was a dreamy haze 
before his unfixed eyes, and conveyed no knowledge 
to his roaming mind. He was a dull scholar. As 
he approached to man's estate he was as loath to work 
as he had been to study. He was lazy, indolent, 
thriftless. All the testimony upon this part of his 
life unites in presenting the picture of an ignorant, 
awkward young man, who with all the incentives to 
work about him, with poverty like a stern taskmas- 
ter behind him, yet absolutely refused or neglected 
to labor with his fellows, but lay basking in idleness 
whole days in the fields by the open furrow ; or 
turning his back upon work which needed to be 
done, wandered with his gun into the woods, or sat 
with rod and line from morning until night on some 
log by the lazy stream. He seemed wholly incapa- 
ble of mental or bodily application. Head and hands 
alike were paralyzed. The spell of idleness and 
re very was upon him. 

But he must work or starve, for this was appar- 
ently the penalty for his neglect of books. So we 
have furtive and unsuccessful attempts which the 
young man made to break away from his gun, his 
fishing rod, and his dreaming. But the spell was 
now re-inforced by the power of habit ; business 
ventures failed upon his hands, and twice was he a 
bankrupt before the age of twenty-four. At last, in 
sheer despair, with a wife and child to support, with- 
out industry, without business, without money, lazy 
and ignorant, he catches at the law as a makeshift 
and a possible means of livelihood. Only barely 
does he secure admission to the bar, so small is his 
preparation, and then follow years of pinching pov- 

21 



322 PATRICK HENRY. 

erty and humiliation, as the just and natural fruit of 
all this idleness and ignorance, for the law has no 
better or different reward for these than have other 
avocations. 

Pause here, now, and survey this young man at 
whose boyhood and youth I have only hastily 
glanced, as he stands at the threshold of his career. 
What promise have we in the history of this awkward 
youth of the Hanover Slashes, who will not study, 
who will not work, who idles and dreams away the 
precious golden hours of his boyhood, who has failed 
in every employment, and who now, as we have 
seen, has almost surreptitiously gained his admis- 
sion to the bar ? Certainly, without exaggeration, 
the life of the future orator presents at this point 
a most discouraging record and outlook. Only one 
ray, one solitary gleam of light, flashes across this 
dull background of his boyhood, and that is the pic- 
ture we have of him going with his mother to hear 
the eloquent Davies preach, and the record how the 
lad of fourteen was moved and stirred by the words 
of the orator ; a slight circumstance, a faint sign of 
what was within him. But that sign was long passed, 
and now the boy has grown into the man, still idle, 
still ignorant, and still thriftless. 

Tell me now what shall be the outcome of all this ? 
Judged by every principle of human nature, by every 
law and maxim of human industry, by every obser- 
vation of human experience, what shall be expected 
of such beginnings .'' These all will say, you will 
say, that the boy is father to the man, that as the 
sowing has been, so will be the reaping, and that 
mediocrity, obscurity, humiliation, and poverty will 



PATRICK HENRY. 323 

be the lot of the boy who would not study and the 
young man who would not work. 

Not so fast — not so fast. Here is a great law, 
which, with all our wisdom and all our maxims, we 
are likely to overlook. God's ways are deeper than 
ours, and sometimes all our worldly calculations are 
upset by the exhibition before our astonished eyes, 
at that which looks like a miracle, but which is only 
a profounder law, which, with our dull vision, we can 
not see. 

O ! Genius thou art justified of thy children, and 
thy divine spark, though long buried and seemingly 
lost, is never wholly quenched. So here is thy mira- 
cle to be reproduced. Out of this chrysalis of con- 
tradictions, out of all this ignorance and indolence 
and want of thrift, out of all these mean surround- 
ings and hindrances, there is to burst upon the 
world a royal orator, such as God only sends once 
in a thousand years — an orator to take rank and 
company with the greatest, and shine forever as a 
fixed star in the galaxy of eloquence. 

The time approaches when this new luminary 
shall break through the obscuring clouds. The 
Revolution was still a long way off, but the early 
murmurs of discontent were already beginning to be 
heard. Patrick Henry was now a lawyer, but he 
was a very ignorant, and naturally a briefless one 
For three years he had been without business and 
dependent upon his father in-law for support, in 
whose plain, old Virginia tavern he is said to have 
been reduced to the humiliation of tending bar. He 
was reaping as he had sown, and only poverty and 
despair were apparently before him. It was here 



324 PATRICK HENRY. 

also when his proud spirit must have chafed under 
his bitter fortune that he soothed himself with his 
violin, and played off his pleasantries upon the coun- 
try loungers at the tavern. And here, too, while in 
the bitter school of adversity, he was learning human 
nature from close and every-day contact with the 
common people. 

THE "parson's cause." A SERIO-COMIC 
LAW SUIT. 

The occasion for the first exhibition of his powers 
borders upon the ludicrous. They had, it seems, a 
State religion in Virginia, in those old days, and the 
established clergy were paid by law in tobacco — a 
sort of currency then in vogue and passing as legal 
tender among the people. Even our currency, I 
think, is better than that. We smile, too, at the idea 
of paying ministers in that way, but bad as the pay 
seems, it was probably a good deal better than the 
preaching ; for, from all accounts, these clergy were 
an unspiritual, bibulous, fox-hunting set. 

It appears that in 1755, at a time of great public 
distress, a law had been passed in the colony giving 
an option to the people for ten months, to pay the 
clergy in money, at the rate of two pence for every 
pound of tobacco — sixteen thousand pounds being 
the whole yearly salary. Think of it, a year's preach- 
ing for sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco ! Well, 
the people, the ungrateful parishioners of these 
clergymen, it would appear, very generally availed 
themselves of the benefit of this law. They held on 
to their tobacco and turned the preachers off with 
the two pence. 



PATRICK HENRY. 325 

Now this was making tobacco altogether too cheap 
to suit the notions of the clergy, — it was an inflation 
of their currency, which they thought they could 
not stand, — and they grumbled a good deal, although 
they did not resist, but sullenly pocketed the insult 
and the two pence, and kept on with their preach- 
ing. But when in l7o8 a similar law was passed, 
they appealed to King George and his council across 
the sea, being themselves very obsequiously loyal to 
the king, and for this and other reasons, very gener- 
ally hated by the people. The king and council, 
not unwilling to gratify their loyal pets, and to 
rebuke the rising independence of the people, set the 
law aside as unconstitutional. 

This was turning the tables, and the clergy, per- 
ceiving their advantage, immediately brought suit 
for their arrearage of salary, claiming that they had 
been unlawfully and unconstitutionally swindled out 
of their tobacco. You will perceive at once that 
this was a sort of inverted salary grab, or move on 
their part, for back pay — old style. 

It must be confessed that in a strictly legal point 
of view they had the advantage, and when the court 
very properly overruled the demurrer to their decla- 
ration, and the case stood on a simple inquiry of 
damages before a jury, any good lawyer would have 
pronounced it a hopeless one. There could be no 
question about it at all ; it was a plain matter of 
computation — the mere finding of the difference 
between the two pence per pound, which the clergy 
had received, and the market value of tobacco at 
the time. 



326 PATRICK HENRY. 

THE FIRST TRIAL OF PATRICK HENRY'S POWERS. 

At this stage Patrick Henry appears upon the 
scene. The people are making a show of resistance, 
and some attorney is needed as a matter of form. 
The briefless young lawyer is ready for a job, how- 
ever hopeless, and for want of a better advocate the 
people take him. It is more than probable that his 
ignorance of the law was so great that he did not 
know how hopeless the case was. But ready for 
some excitement to break the monotony of his dull 
life, laying aside his fiddle and gun, and rousing 
himself, he goes up with the crowd that fills the 
Hanover Courthouse on that December morning in 
1763, and nervously takes his place at the table as 
the counsel for the defendants. How awe-inspiring 
and critical the moment for him ! On the bench of 
the presiding magistrate sits his own father, on either 
side of him the other judges, around them and behind 
them in the chief seats, like their prototypes of old, 
the plaintiff clergymen, glowering derisively upon 
the young attorney, and anticipating their certain 
and speedy triumph. There is the jury in their box, 
and there are the benches all filled with the anxious 
people — the people who had known this awkward, 
ignorant young man from his earliest boyhood, but 
had never known anything of him that could give 
them assurance in such an hour as this. On the 
other side, representing the plaintiffs, was a veteran 
counselor, all at ease, with his long practice and 
established reputation, and sure of victory. 

What a terrible array is all this for the young man 
to face. Talk of courage, the courage of war and 



PATRICK HENRY. 327 

battle ! For such an hour and effort as this it takes 
more real courage and nerve than to ride with the 
six hundred into the mouth of hell ! And how para- 
doxical it seems — at such a time the speaker's best 
friends are more appalling to him than any strangers 
or enemies, and his own father than a king would be 
upon his throne. Who can tell what thoughts, rapid, 
vivid, and despairing, like the thoughts of a drown- 
ing man, filled and flashed through the mind of 
Patrick Henry in that fearful hour, when for the first 
time in his life he stood before an audience to try 
his powers — and such an audience! How could he 
know that he had any powers ? He had never 
spoken in public. Did he bitterly regret that he 
had undertaken the terrible responsibility, and in- 
wardly curse himself for his temerity .'* Did he feel 
the pangs of remorse for precious hours idled and 
dreamed away, whose improvement might have given 
him that assuring knowledge which would now sit 
like a comforting angel by his side.-* Did hope 
utterly sink within his breast as he looked into the 
anxious face of his father, as he beheld the forms of 
the clergy, or encountered the wondering stare of his 
old friends of the store, the dance, and the tavern ? 
Did he feel that he must fly from all this, rush out 
into the free sunshine, and escape the terrible peril 
at the cost of confession of weakness or imposture.-* 
Or did he summon the hero within him to beat off 
these thick, thronging phantoms of despair, and lift 
his soul into the upper air for the divine help of 
genius .'' 

We shall see, for now the supreme moment has 
come for him to speak. He rises awkwardly, nerv- 



328 PATRICK HENRY. 

ously, almost staggering with confusion and embar- 
rassment. His memory, his perception, all his mental 
faculties and powers seem to pass into sudden 
eclipse, — he forgets, he loses all he intended to say, 
his tongue seems paralyzed and thick, and he stam- 
mers out a few feeble, half-formed, incoherent sen- 
tences. A shudder runs through the crowd — the 
young man is going to fail, to break down ! See, he 
can hardly stand upon his feet ; he weakens every 
moment, he will presently be completely overpow- 
ered, and sink into his seat. O, how does that father 
on the bench, before all the people, feel now .-' How 
do the people themselves feel for their young advo- 
cate and their cause, now about to be buried in 
shame and defeat ? And the hated clergy on their 
high seats, they nod and wink at each other, exult- 
ing like devils at the poor young man's discomfiture. 
But like devils they shall soon be cast out and down, 
for the young man begins to recover himself, — he 
stands more erect, his voice sounds out clearer and 
louder, his memory comes back, his faculties are 
once more under his control ; his form begins to 
dilate and expand and to take on unwonted and 
wondrous grace, and his eyes, now uplifted until 
they sweep and survey his audience with an eagle 
glance, seem to flame with supernatural fires, and to 
burn into the very souls of the astonished spectators. 
The transformation is as complete as it is sudden. 
The awkward, backwoods youth, a moment ago but 
a stammering clown, about to receive a terrible pun- 
ishment for his presumption, is now changed into 
the great and godlike orator, clothed with the grace 
of Apollo, and holding in his hand the lightnings 
and the thunders of Jove. 



PATRICK HENRY. 329 

No wonder the excited multitude, when the splen- 
did exhibition was done, carried the newborn orator 
upon their shoulders in triumph, and hailed him as 
the man of the people ! It was a moment for the 
painter, and ought to be immortalized upon canvas ; 
for there in that Hanover Courthouse was enacted 
one of the memorable scenes of history, — there was 
ushered into the world an orator, full armed like 
Minerva from the brain of Jove, who was to take 
rank with Demosthenes. The spell of indolence and 
dreaming, of poverty and revery, is now broken, and 
Patrick Henry begins to play his great and divinely 
ordered part on the Revolutionary stage. No more 
poverty and despair now — no lack of business or 
friends. From that hour it is a new world to him. 
He had made a discovery ; he had found out the 
power within him ; he was rich now in the posses- 
sion of something which all the money in the world 
could not buy. His neighbors and friends would now 
see that his awkward manners and uncouth speech 
were but the rough setting of the flashing diamond ; 
and all men would now be generous to the seeming 
faults of his boyhood, for genius had woven her 
brooding spell upon him. and he could not break 
away from her dreams and her reveries. The orbit 
of genius indeed, like that of the blazing comet, is 
always irregular, and it is not fair to judge it by our 
ordinary rules. 

PATRICK HENRY AS A LAWYER. 

I have dwelt thus at some length upon the first 
exhibition of Patrick Henry's wonderful eloquence 
because the circumstances themselves are so remark- 



330 PATRICK HENRY. 

able that they will never lose their interest, and 
because I wished to picture to you the full height 
and measure of this great orator of nature as he thus 
so suddenly steps upon the scene. I shall pass now 
lightly over the next two years of his history in 
which he devotes himself, somewhat irregularly, it is 
true, to the practice of the law, as I wish to dwell 
more particularly upon his public career, and espe- 
cially upon those scenes where he figures so con- 
spicuously as the great orator of the Revolution. 
Little need be said of him as a lawyer, for though he 
thoroughly understood human nature, and had great 
power over juries, still his lack of early culture and 
his great deficiency in legal knowledge serve to 
make his figure at the bar a minor one and not at all 
essential to his fame. Some of the qualities of the 
great lawyer, and especially the great advocate, he 
unquestionably had, besides the piercing and mag- 
netic eloquence which finds such ample scope and 
room before a jury. Among the few memorials of 
him which are preserved is an argument, or the full 
outlines of an argument, before the Circuit Court of 
the United States for the State of Virginia on a con- 
stitutional question, which is a logical and powerful 
piece of legal reasoning, and which conclusively 
shows that his mind was not destitute of that breadth 
and strength and cogency which distinguish the 
great common law lawyer. 

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION — CHARACTER 
OF THE STRUGGLE. 

But the time now rapidly hastens when Patrick 
Henry is to be called to his destiny as the orator of 



PATRICK HENRY. 331 

the Revolution. His speech in the parson's cause 
was but the prelude or overture to the still greater 
and grander efforts which he was to make for liberty 
and independence. 

The American Revolution was one of the greatest 
political events in the world's history. An ocean 
separated the two contending powers and the com- 
batants came from different continents. And so, 
while in one sense it was a civil war, between men 
of the same blood, the victory of the colonies easily 
and naturally resulted in the birth of a nation. 
Macaulay has said that it is a rule without exception 
that the violence of a revolution corresponds to the 
degree of the misgovernment which produces it, and 
he has pronounced our Revolution the mildest of all. 
This may be true, if we look sim[)ly at the elements 
of fiendish atrocity and cruelty and internal disorder 
which frequently mark such struggles ; for the men 
of our Revolution, on either side, 'were distinguished 
for civilization and culture ; their lines ran back to 
the days of chivalry, and the magnanimous conduct 
of our noble Gen. Philip Schuyler toward the van- 
quished Burgoyne deserves to stand out beside the 
immortal act of Sir Philip Sidney. But our struggle 
was, nevertheless, one of the longest and most ardu- 
ous upon record. It was, indeed, a long, stout con- 
test between foes who had never learned to yield. 

Compared, also, with the grievances for which 
other peoples have rebelled, the causes which pro- 
duced our Revolution seem light and trivial. But we 
must remember the character of the men against 
whom these causes were made. Our fathers were, 
for the most part, unmixed Englishmen, and had 



332 PATRICK HENRY. 

inherited the best blood and the noblest traditions 
of the Anglo-Saxon race. They were the descend- 
ants of the sturdy barons who humbled the pride of 
King John, and of Pym and Hampden, and the men 
who sat in the Long Parliament and curbed the 
insolent tyranny of the Stuarts. 

Taxation without representation was enough for 
them. And it made no difference to them whether 
these taxes were levied and attempted to be collected 
directly or indirectly ; whether by Stamp acts, by 
a Boston Port bill, or a tax upon tea. True, they 
could have paid these petty insignificant taxes and 
never felt it ; but the outrage and the insult they 
would have felt. So they went to war upon a princi- 
ple ; they made a stand at the very threshold of the 
temple of civil liberty, and thus rendered an inesti- 
mable service to their posterity and taught the world 
the sublime lesson that " resistance to tyrants is 
obedience to God." 

But resistance to tyranny and not independence 
was the first thought of our fathers. There would 
have been no blood shed and no separation from the 
mother country if England had imposed no further 
exactions after the repeal of the Stamp act. The 
Colonies were still loyal up to the fight at Lexing- 
ton. In 1861 our Southern States went into rebellion 
because they feared the area of slavery would be cir- 
cumscribed and because a Republican president had 
been elected. The causes were utterly insufficient, 
but the South, unlike the colonies, would not accept 
the Crittenden compromise. They sought separa- 
tion and independence as an end ; they would not 
listen to reason, and so they misquoted history when 
they appealed to the example of our fathers. 



PATRICK HENRY. .S33 

But the British ministry was not content after the 
repeal of the Stamp act, and so there were fresh ex- 
actions and new acts of Parliament all intended to 
force the colonies into obedience. The right was 
still arrogantly claimed to bind the colonies in all 
things whatsoever. Then the excitement on this 
side the water was renewed, and for nearly ten years 
the war of moral resistance, the contest of ideas, of 
resolves and petitions, of public meetings, protests, 
and memorials, was carried on before a hostile gun 
was fired. The Revolution really began as early as 
1761 — one hundred years before the great rebellion. 

The colonies were widely scattered ; the country 
was new ; there were no railroads and telegraphs and 
few newspapers ; it was a long way from Boston to 
Charleston. There was yet no organization, no 
political union or concert of action. The sturdy 
patriots, each in his place, were fighting where they 
stood. Massachusetts and Virginia were the leaders, 
but South Carolina, too, was full of liberty as she 
afterward was of slavery. Boston was the real head- 
quarters of the Revolution, as Charleston was of the 
great rebellion. James Otis was a flame ot fire, 
Samuel Adams was a great organizer of resistance, 
while Joseph Warren and John Adams were the gal- 
lant leaders of the young guard of liberty. 

PATRICK HENRY APPEARS UPON THE REVOLUTION- 
ARY STAGE. — HIS SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF 
BURGESSES AGAINST THE STAMP ACT. 

It was in the midst of this great excitement that 
Patrick Henry appeared upon the scene. He was 
elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses, and took 



334 PATRICK HENRY. 

his seat in May, iTOo, just after the passage of the 
Stamp act. The House of Burgesses was a colonial 
legislature, and the grave public exigency had filled 
it with the best talent of Virginia. On its humble 
benches sat a score of orators and statesmen who 
would have done honor to any legislative body under 
the sun. Pendleton, Randolph, Nicholas, Lee, Jeffer- 
son — these were shining names, some of them des- 
tined to stand high in the annals of the country, and 
all of them representing men of power. What could 
Patrick Henry do in such an assembly ? These were 
men of culture and various learning, profound law- 
yers, accomplished scholars. He was still ignorant 
of law and literature, was a backwoods young dele- 
gate, all unused, indeed, to the mere presence of 
cultivated and refined society. His manners were 
awkward, his speech uncouth, his dress unfashionable 
and slovenly. What could he do in a body of ora- 
tors, scholars, and gentlemen ? 

History has told us what he did do. He had 
found out his power. His speech in the parson's 
case was to him like a direct revelation from God. 
It reassured him ; it made him bold — not presump- 
tuous, not immodest, but self-reliant and brave. The 
great champions of liberty, the divinely appointed 
men who stand out as leaders in every great effort of 
humanity, always have this splendid confidence, this 
high enthusiasm, this divine egotism that seems 
whispered into their souls by the lips of angels. 
Patrick Henry knew he was ignorant and unlettered, 
he knew that he had come from the country where 
he had idled and dreamed the years away, hunting, 
fishing, fiddling, which these men had carefully im- 



PATRICK HENRY. 335 

proved in the noble studies of the University. But 
he knew also that God had conferred upon him, in 
full measure, the divine gift of genius, and that he 
had within him a power which no learning of books 
could give, and which would lift him to the level of 
any great and supreme occasion. 

He did not, therefore, hesitate or falter in what 
seemed his duty. The Stamp act had alarmed and 
roused the people of the colonies. He was a man of 
the people, sprung from their ranks, he had always 
identified himself with their cause, and he fully 
sympathized with their demands. Unlearned in 
books and the precedents of history, he was wise in 
the knowledge of men, and more clearly than any 
other man of that day he saw and realized the full 
scope and significance of the impending contest. 
While his associates were in favor of more petitions 
to the crown, of more temporizing and makeshifts of 
compromise, his penetrating mind took in the whole 
situation at a glance, and he boldly came forward in 
the House with a set of resolutions, which with char- 
acteristic carelessness he had written on the fly leaf 
of a law book, but which stoutly and squarely denied 
the right of Parliament to tax the colonies and 
sounded the keynote of the Revolution. I have not 
time to give you the particulars of the memorable 
discussion which followed the introduction of these 
resolutions. Patrick Henry had nearly the whole 
talent of the assembly against him, but by the exhi- 
bition of the most undaunted courage, the most 
prodigious will, and the most wonderful and over- 
powering eloquence, he finally carried his resolu- 
tions, and thus to him is due the supreme honor of 



336 PATRICK HENRY. 

first asserting that the exclusive right of taxation 
belonged to the colonies, and that the Stamp act and 
all other acts of a like character were unconstitu- 
tional and void. This was indeed the beginning of 
real revolution, the first great step toward separa- 
tion and independence ; for it was the bold asser- 
tion of a power in the colonies that belonged only to 
the idea of an independent government. No won- 
der, then, that the great orator encountered a pas- 
sionate and vehement opposition from all the cringing 
loyalists and timid conservatives in the house, and 
that their cries of "treason, treason," echoed on 
every side when rising to the sublime height of his 
terrible climax he thundered: ''Caesar had his 
Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George 
the Third — may profit by their example." 

It took lofty courage to speak such words as these 
at such a time, but by this bold and magnificent 
effort, Patrick Henry placed himself at the head of 
the Revolutionary movement in Virginia, giving it a 
powerful impetus, and the fame of his brave resolu- 
lutions and his noble speech soon spread to the other 
colonies, and became an inspiration to the strug- 
gling patriots everywhere. Thus at the early age 
of twenty-nine this awkward, ignorant young lawyer 
of the Hanover Courthouse, had become the foremost 
orator of a great revolution which was destined to 
change the political face of the world. 

HE IS ELECTED TO THE FIRST CONTINENTAL 
CONGRESS. 

But it was ten years yet to Lexington and Con- 
cord, and in the meantime there came a lull in the 



PATRICK HENRY. 337 

contest when England repealed the Stamp act, and 
the colonies hoped that at last they were to have 
justice from the mother country. Then Patrick 
Henry resumed the practice of the law in his hum- 
ble circuit, but soon returned to the front of the 
struggle when fresh acts of British tyranny again 
roused the people of America from their short dream 
of peace and reconciliation. He continued to hold a 
seat in the House of Burgesses and to take the lead 
in every movement of the patriots until 1774, when, 
chiefly through his suggestion and instrumentality, 
the first Continental Congress was called to meet 
in Philadelphia. Of course I am giving the merest 
glance and allusion to a period which was crowded 
with stirring events, but I must hasten on to the 
grander and still more momentous occasions when 
his eloquence was to electrify and sway his fellows, 
and sound out to millions the war cry of the Revo- 
lution. In that august and historic body, the first 
Continental Congress, which assembled in Carpen- 
ter's Hall, in the city of Philadelphia, on the fourth 
day of September, 1774, Patrick Henry took his seat 
as a member. Virginia had not forgotten her bold 
and brilliant young orator in making up that delega- 
tion of remarkable men — a delegation which, besides 
his, includes the name of George Washington, Thomas 
Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, Peyton Randolph, and 
Edmund Pendleton. Surely, there were giants in 
those days. Would to God we had some of them 
now ! And these great men from Virginia met there 
and sat down with such men as Samuel Adams and 
John Adams, from Massachusetts ; John Jay and 
Philip Livingston, from New York ; Thomas Mifflin 

22 



338 PATRICK HENRY. 

and John Dickinson, fronn Pennsylvania ; Henry 
Middleton and John Rutledge, from South Carolina. 
The solemn silence of that great assembly was first 
broken by the voice of Patrick Henry in a memora- 
ble speech, which is said to have been grand and 
sublime beyond description, but of which no record 
remains. Here, also, he was first to sound out the 
keynote of the Revolution, and proclaim the lofty 
duty of the hour. From that moment it was never 
doubted that he was the noblest orator of America 
and the most powerful advocate of independence. 

HIS GREAT SPEECH IN THE VIRGINIA CONVENTION 
— "GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH." 

But events are now rapidly hastening toward the 
most glorious occasion and the crowning effort of 
eloquence in the great orator's career. The Conti- 
nental Congress with all its wisdom and ability — a 
wisdom and ability which drew from the great Lord 
Chatham that noble panegyric in the British Parlia- 
ment — had not been able to ward off the impending 
danger. The British ministry, backed by an obsti- 
nate and foolish king, still had influence enough in 
Parliament^to override the wise counsels of Chatham 
and Burke and^Fox, and other noble friends of Amer- 
ica, and fresh acts of coercion were passed. The 
Congress adjourned, and with the awful clouds of 
war gathering black and portentious, Patrick Henry 
went home to Virginia to prepare for the worst. 
Here in the Virginia Convention, in March, 177;">, he 
moved that the militia should be organized and "the 
colony be immediately put in a state of defense." 

This^was the signal for an outburst of opposition 



PATRICK HENRY. 339 

such as had i^reeted him ten years before when he 
offered his celebrated resolutions denouncing the 
Stamp act. All the elements of loyalty which still 
clung to the crown, of conservatism which dreaded 
so bold a step, and of timid compromise which still 
hoped for reconciliation and peace, were now 
arrayed against him. In advance of the final appeal 
to arms, a year before the declaration of independ- 
ence, before a hostile gun had been fired, he was 
proposing a measure of real and actual war. To 
adopt it was to draw the sword and defy the mili- 
tary power of England. But Patrick Henry knew 
that the hour had come. He saw with the visior. of 
a prophet that longer petition and remonstrance was 
vain. 

So, now, firm and undaunted as of yore, he looked 
this great opposition in the face, and gathered his 
strength for the supreme and most glorious effort of 
his life. No words of mine can do justice to this 
memorable speech. No language of mine can paint 
before your eyes with adequate vividness and power 
that scene in the Old St. John's Church in Rich- 
mond, when the great orator rose to make his final 
reply to the many plausible, strong, and vehement 
arguments which had been urged against his motion. 
Back through a hundred years, in imagination, we 
may see him now, as he stands there in the prime 
of his manly strength, with lofty mien and flashing 
eye, and our ears may catch the sublime utterances 
of that wonderful voice which so thrilled through 
every chamber of the soul. O. what a sight is that ! 
What a scene ! See how, Samson-like, he twists 
and breaks the strongest arguments of his adver- 



340 PATRICK HENRY. 

saries like wisps of straw, and tramples their studied 
objections beneath his feet in the rush and sweep of 
his tremendous onset. What to him now is opposi- 
tion but the fulcrum of his power and the opportunity 
of his genius .-* He rises with the great argument 
until he seems more than human, and the dele- 
gates hold their breath in awe. Never before has 
human eloquence reached a higher point. At last 
the great orator approaches the climax of his speech 
and pronounces its immortal peroration. With a 
glow of splendid passion which dilated his form and 
irradiated his face like an angel's, with his eyes 
flashing supernatural fire, with lofty attitude and the 
imperious gesture of a god, he exclaims : — 

"There is no retreat but in submission and slav- 
ery ! Our chains are forged. Their clanking may 
be heard on the plains of Boston. The war is inevi- 
table — and let it come. I repeat it, sir, let it 
come." 

" It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. 
Gentlemen may cry. Peace, peace, but there is no 
peace. The war is actually begun. The next gale 
that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the 
clash of resounding arms. Our brethren are already 
in the field. Why stand we here idle ? What is it 
that gentlemen wish .'' What would they have ? Is 
life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at 
the price of chains and slavery ? Forbid it, Almighty 
God ! I know not what course others may take ; 
but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!" 

Oh ! it was a sublime sight ; it was genius on fire ; 
it was the orator in highest action — every note 
sounded in that magnificent keyboard of eloquence. 



PATRICK HENRY. 341 

The words of that speech will echo in history as long 
as the guns of Lexington and Bunker Hill. 

AFTER HISTORY — \VAR GOVERNOR AND STATESMAN. 

Patrick Menry had been prophet as well as orator, 
and his stern and solemn warning : " We must fight, 
I repeat it, sir, we must fight," was not uttered a 
moment too soon. For now the war began in deadly 
earnest ; the great cause of the colonies was trans- 
ferred from the field of discussion to the field of 
arms, and the voice of the orator was drowned in the 
rattle of musketry and the roar of cannon. Here the 
great mission of Patrick Henry as the inspired orator 
and mouthpiece of the Revolution may be said to 
have ended. It was now the time for the soldier to 
take up the great work, and so this same year Wash- 
ington enters upon the scene as the Commander-in- 
Chief of the Continental army, and l)egins that lofty 
career which made him " first iii war. first in peace, 
and first in the hearts of his countrymen." But 
though the great orator had done his noblest work, 
and now gave way for the sword, he was not for- 
gotten, nor did he cease to be useful to the Revolu- 
tionary cause. From the forum he passed to the 
cabinet and the council table, and in 177f^» — just one 
hundred years ago — was elected the first Republi- 
can governor of Virginia — an office which he held 
until 1779, when he was no longer eligible. I shall 
not pause upon his career as war governor and 
statesman. It must suffice to say that he was wise 
in counsel and vigorous in action as he had been 
powerful and commanding in speech. Never did he 
lose hjart or hope in the great cause. The war, as 



342 PATRICK HENRY. 

we know, had its alternating hopes and fears, its 
vicissitudes of success and failure, its great excite- 
ments and depressions. We, of this generation, who 
were thrilled by Sumpter, Appomattox, and the 
Assassination, can realize how our fathers felt over 
Lexington, Valley Forge, and Yorktown. 

When the war was over, Patrick Henry, as I have 
already said, was again elected governor of Virginia, 
for three consecutive terms, when he was no longer 
eligible. He sat also in the Virginia Convention to 
ratify the Federal Constitution — an instrument 
whose adoption he vigorously opposed because he 
thought it violated the sovereignty of the States. 
In 1795, he declined the office of secretary of state 
offered him by Washington, as he afterward did 
another election as governor of Virginia, and the 
post of envoy to France, tendered him by President 
Adams. Soon, too, he retired wholly from the prac- 
tice at the bar, which, in the intervals of official 
labor, he had irregularly followed, and his public 
career was now closed. 

HIS RETIREMENT AND OLD AGE, 

It was in 1704, at the age of 58, that Patrick Henry 
retired wholly from professional and public employ- 
ment to spend the evening of his days upon his farm 
in the quiet enjoyment of domestic and private life. 
It was an early age for such a step, as he should have 
been yet in his prime, but his nerves had probably 
been somewhat shattered and his bodily strength 
impaired by the stormy life through which he had 
passed and the tremendous excitements of the Revo- 
lution. For six years he enjoyed serene rest and 



PATRICK HENRY. 343 

peace. History has preserved a beautiful picture of 
the great orator during those last years when, 
crowned with the honors and gratitude of the peo- 
ple, with his devoted family and friends about him, 
in peace after so much strife, in comparative afflu- 
ence after so much poverty and distress, with pa- 
triarchial dignity and simplicity he rounded out his 
career — fit ending of a life so pure and great. 

He was the father of a large family of children, 
some of whom by a second wife were still young, 
and in their society he found great delight, joining 
in their s[)c)rts witii infinite zest and frequently being 
caught by a sudden visitor, like that great king of 
France, down upon the floor in the midst of their 
play, himself a child again. I confess that to me 
such a picture as this is very beautiful and touching, 
for the love of children is one of the best signs of a 
noble nature. 

To his neighbors and friends ,he was genial and 
kindly, and to the people, by whom he was almost 
idolized, he was open and hospitable. His home was 
a kind of Mecca for strangers and pilgrims who came 
long distances to see the great champion of inde- 
pendence, and these were always welcome, and usu- 
ally rewarded with delightful conversations with the 
venerable patriot. He was simple and abstemious 
in his habits, of deep religious feelings and rever- 
ence, and like Milton, great in song as he in elo- 
quence, he was wont to gather his family and domes- 
tics about him on Sunday evenings for a season of 
sacred music, when, taking down the violin of his 
youth, he would join in the grateful melody. 

It is hard to think that this beautiful picture of 



344 PATRICK HENRY. 

Patrick Henry's old age and retirement should be 
marred by the angry excitements of political strife, 
and that from its serene quiet he was again to be 
plunged into the turmoil of politics. Harder still to 
think that the aged patriot who was now the object 
of undivided reverence and honor was soon to be 
subjected to unjust suspicions, reproaches, and denun- 
ciations for a change of his political views and party 
relations, and that, shattered by this last unexpected 
battle, he was to die in the midst of the strife. 

Patrick Henry had been a Republican, and had 
opposed the adoption of the federal constitution, as 
I have already told you, because he thought it vio- 
lated the rights of the States. He had sided with 
Jefferson and against Hamilton in the political divi- 
sions of that day. But alarmed at the terrible spec- 
ters of the French Revolution then at its height, and 
the tendencies to anarchy which he thought he saw 
on this side of the water, and moved also by the per- 
sonal wishes of Washington, he now threw his great 
influence with the Federalists, and became a candi- 
date for a seat in the State legislature. He hoped 
in this way to be instrumental in repairing the mis- 
chief of the celebrated Virginia State rights resolu- 
tion of 1798. In the short and violent struggle 
which followed and which resulted in his triumphant 
election, he made the last speech of his life. It was 
worthy of his fame, and when, quivering from its 
excitement, he descended from the rostrum, a by- 
stander exclaimed: '"The sun has set in all his 
glory." 

He did not live to take his seat, but died on the 
6th of June, 1799, thus preceding by a few months 



PATRICK HENRY. 345 

only his illustrious friend, Washington. So great 
and bitter was the feeling caused by his defection 
from his party that resolutions in honor of his mem- 
ory offered in the legislature when it assembled, 
were laid upon the table by the Republican major- 
ity. Yet, who doubts now that Patrick Henry was 
brave and honest in this as he had been when he 
stood for the rights of the colonies against the power 
of England ? Pie differed with his party ! How 
great such a thing appears at the time in the eyes of 
men excited and inflamed by party zeal and bigotry ! 
How small it seems in the calm light of history ! It 
is an almost forgotten circumstance in his history, 
and has not left a shadow upon his fame. It does 
not take a hundred years for the people to be just to 
a great man's courage of opinion. In these very 
recent times a similar act of independence subjected 
our greatest and most illustrious statesman to unjust 
reproach and vituperation, but it was only a passing 
cloud, and the fame of Charles Sumner shines out 
now without a spot upon its grand effulgence. 

AN ESTIMATE OF HIS CHARACTER. 

Here the curtain falls upon this great actor in the 
drama of Independence, and we may now pause and 
take an estimate of his character. The Revolution- 
ary stage upon which he performed his part was an 
exalted one, and he had the whole civilized world 
for his audience. And yet the fame of no other great 
character of the Revolution — perhaps I might say 
of no other great character of the last century— so 
largely rests upon tradition. He left scarcely a writ- 
ten memorial. The perfect art of stenography which 



346 PATRICK HENRY. 

now catches every word of an orator, however rapid 
his delivery, was unknown in his day, and so his 
wonderful speeches were lost. Like magnificent 
intellectual fireworks, they blazed up in splendid 
creations before his astonished auditors, and then 
went out, leaving only an entrancing memory behind. 
So a few scattered portions, or fragments of his 
speeches, imperfectly reported by long hand, and 
the written testimony of a few eye and ear witnesses 
of their power, — this is all the certain data which we 
have. In the diary of John Adams, is the bald out- 
line of his great speech in Carpenter's Hall, in Phila- 
delphia, at the opening of the Continental Congress, 
— a few naked, cheap generalizations, — but this 
brief record of his great New England rival is liter- 
ally all that is preserved of this memorable effort. 
His biography, by W^illiam Wirt, though written 
near his own times and respectably voluminous, con- 
tains little that is reliable, and besides richly deserv- 
ing the criticism of Jefferson that it was a "poor 
book," amounts to little more than an echo of his 
traditionary fame which filled all Virginia. 

There are reasons, it is true, which go far to ex- 
cuse this poverty of facts. The man himself was 
severely simple in his ways, and moved almost exclu- 
sively among the common, unlettered people in a 
rural district away from the centers of intelligence 
and publicity ; he was only once, and for a brief 
session, a member of the Continental Congress ; he 
filled no cabinet position or office connected with the 
general government ; and from lack of early culture, 
as well as from natural indolence, he never used his 
pen. Beyond his local repute as advocate and orator 



PATRICK HENRY. IHI 

among the plain people who saw him almost every 
day, his wider and historic fame was made on a few 
great occasions and by a few master strokes in the 
white heat of the Revolution. At such times he 
appeared suddenly upon the scene, at the critical and 
supreme moment, like the black Knight in "Ivan- 
hoe," with dazzling and almost supernatural power, 
and when the all-conquering blow had been given, 
he retired again to the ranks of the common people 
from which he had come. 

And yet, with all these drawbacks, we need have 
no difficulty or uncertainty in pronouncing Patrick 
Henry to have been one of the most extraordinary 
men and wonderful orators in the world's history. 
He was a great man by God's original endowment 
alone, and derived little help from learning or experi- 
ence. Cast in a lofty and antique mold, like one of 
Plutarch's heroes, he strode across the stage with the 
conscious port and self-reliant tread of the born king 
of men. He was one of those providential men who 
are divinely sent to do some great work at the su- 
preme moments of histor)-. The Revolution needed 
its orator to speak its voice, to utter its protests, 
to rouse to resistance, and it found him in Patrick 
Henry, who gathered up the thoughts of excited mil- 
lions, and put them into burning and immortal words. 

The character of the man well comported with the 
loftiness of his mission. His life was pure, his integ- 
rity unquestioned, he was free from petty vices or 
selfish ambitions ; he was indeed an example of pub- 
lic and private virtue. He could not have been the 
noble knight of liberty which he was if his soul had 
not been as clear and white as the lofty device upon 



848 PATRICK HENRY. 

his shield. The true heroes of history are always 
pure and single of life, for God does not profane his 
truth by giving it into the keeping of unclean hands, 
nor allow the shocking inconsistency of its vindica- 
tion by untruthful and dishonest champions. 1 know 
it has been said of him by a few, that he was a dema- 
gogue, because he so constantly mingled with the 
common people, spoke in their idiom, and reflected 
their sentiments. But to me all this seems a con- 
firmation of the simple honesty of his character. 
The child of nature, as he was, nature was strong 
within him. and sprung himself from the bosom of 
the common people, he never ceased to feel the 
powerful attachments of his origin. Living no arti- 
ficial life among books, or courts, or cabinets, he was 
never weaned from the rough but honest and fresh 
simplicity of his early years. And this daily contact 
and touching with the masses, together with his own 
almost divine endowments, pre-eminently fitted him 
to be what he unquestionably was — a great tribune 
of the people. Had he not known them as he did, 
he could not have spoken for them as he did. How 
true, also, was all this of Abraham Lincoln, our best 
beloved man of the people of this nineteenth century- 
As I have already said, Patrick Henry knew little 
of books or of black letter learning. But he knew 
men and principles by intuition ; what other men 
studied out slowly and laboriously, he knew, he saw 
as by a flash of vivid light. He read and studied 
the great book of human nature with its open pages 
all about him, and he knew well the springs of 
human character and action. It is doubtful indeed if 
this very want of reading and learning was not an 



PATRICK HENRY. 84!) 

advantage to him in the part which he played, as it 
made him more independent, original, and self-reli- 
ant. But we must be careful not to make this the 
standard or rule for other men. He was ignorant, 
but he was great. Let us not therefore despise learn- 
ing. It is true, Karning could not have made him 
what he was, and it is natural, therefore, that he 
should have undervalued it. 

As a statesman, apart from the orator, he was bold, 
far seeing, and incorruptible. His opportunities in 
this direction, it is true, were not large, but so far as 
he was entrusted with the practical conduct of public 
affairs, he gave eminent satisfaction. Here he served 
only his State, having never entered upon the larger 
field of national politics ; but six times was he elected 
governor of Virginia, and at last declined the honor. 
He was gifted with remarkable forecast, as his whole 
public career so well shows, and his keen penetration 
of character was something wonderful. He was first 
of all his contemporaries to discover and proclaim 
the greatness of Washington, and long afterward, 
as he looked across the sea, his eye caught the rising 
star of Napoleon, then but a plain republican gen- 
eral, and he predicted, with striking exactness, his 
subsequent career of empire and blood. 

PATRICK HENRY AS AN ORATOR. 

But it is when viewed as an orator and the mouth- 
piece of the Revolution that we find the chief secret 
of Patrick Henry's power and his strongest claim 
upon the remembrance of history. Patriot and 
statesman he was, but other men of the Revo- 
lution were as patriotic as he, and other names 



350 PATRICK HENRY. 

Stand above his in the ranks of statesmanship. But 
as an orator he stands supreme, and towers above all 
others. Here he plays no secondary part. I know 
there were other great orators and speakers in that 
struggle who richly deserve to rank with the best and 
greatest ever produced in any land or age. There at 
its opening was James Otis, whose speech, in 1761, 
against the writs of assistance was pronounced a 
flame of fire ; there from New England, also, was 
John Adams, the great debater and colossus of the 
Declaration on the floor of the Congress of 1776 ; 
there was the silver-tongued Richard Henry Lee, 
from his own Virginia, who was not inaptly or un- 
worthily called the Cicero of America ; and there 
were Rutledge and Pendleton and Mason, and a 
score of orators from all sections of the country 
to make up the great array. But so immensely 
did Patrick Henry surpass them all that their fame 
has been overshadowed and dwarfed by his colossal 
reputation, and he seems to stand out alone on the 
historic page. 

We can not analyze and criticise the parts and 
powers of such an orator as he was. No lines or 
rules of school or art are adecjuate to bound or 
measure him. Lesser orators can be largely made 
by study, and can be judged by the rules and stand- 
ards of their art. But the truly great orator is God- 
created and sent, and is above all rules and criticism ; 
he sweeps all criticism away in a great rush and flood 
of nature, and men can only look up wonderingly to 
admire and adore. 

So it was pre-eminently with Patrick Henry. He 
was a great prodigy of natural eloquence. He knew 



PATRICK HENRY. 3ol 

absolutely nothing of eloquence as an art ; it is prob- 
able that he never looked at a single rule of rhetoric 
in his life. What Daniel Webster has so well and 
wisely said of true eloquence was peculiarly true of 
him. His eloquence did indeed come from the man 
and the occasion, and was " like the outbreaking of 
a fountain from the earth or the bursting forth of 
volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native 
force." It did not come from far. Neither labor 
nor learning had toiled for it, and its conceptions 
swiftly outran all the deductions of logic. It was a 
great and sublime force, heaven-sent for the good of 
men. Nor is this any wild exaggeration of speech 
or panegyric. Happily, we are not left here to any 
vague tradition ; for, besides the concurrent testimony 
of many others, Jefferson, a most competent author- 
ity, who heard him often, has said that "he spoke as 
Homer wrote," and that his eloquence " was sublime 
beyond description." John Randol[)h, too, the keen 
and eloquent Virginian of the succeeding genera- 
tion, who must have heard him frequently in his 
youth, has left the striking and epigrammatic eulogy, 
" He was Shakespeare and Garrick combined." What 
more is needed on this point when such judges exalt 
his genius to the height of Homer and Shakespeare ? 
Coming closer to his style and method, we see 
that it was distinguished for a bold and rapid gener- 
alization and a vivid imagery, seizing upon the 
strong and salient points of the subject with an 
iron logic and grasp, and illuminating it with the 
splendid light of his imagination. His speeches were 
generall}- short. No audience could long endure such 
rapt and terrible tension. His personal presence 



352 PATRICK HENRY. 

was in full keeping with the peculiar character of his 
eloquence. The tall, spare form, the nervous lines of 
his face, the stern knit brows, the fiery and soul-pene- 
trating eyes, and the striking and majestic attitude 
— all these well comported with the thrilling, awe- 
inspiring, and sublime effect of his speeches. But 
this stern, severe man, so full of lofty seriousness and 
passionate fire, had in his composition a vein of rich- 
est humor, and could relax into passages of such infi- 
nite drollery and ridicule as would set his audience 
in a roar. A notable instance of this was the oft- 
quoted speech to a jury, after the Revolution, where 
he so effectually laughed John Hook, the "beef" 
claimant, out of court. His voice, too, had an inde- 
scribable charm and power, and lingered and haunted 
the memory long after its wonderful cadences had 
died away upon the ear. 

But he needed contact with his audience to fire his 
genius and give this grace and majesty to his person. 
Demosthenes, in the calm of his study, could light 
his mind from within, but Henry needed the great 
debate and the high war of words to wake up his 
faculties to their fullest play ; just as many great 
commanders have needed the roar and thunder of 
battle to bring out their genius. So, too, he was fired 
by the danger of the conflict. The true orator is 
always brave as well as honest, and no genuine elo- 
quence ever yet came from the lips of a coward or a 
demagogue. Patrick Henry was as courageous and 
as real a hero of the Revolution as Israel Putnam or 
Anthony Wayne. 

I have not time, as I could wish, to compare our 
great Revolutionary orator with his illustrious rivals 



PATRICK HENRY. 353 

and compeers of other ages and lands. There is but 
one English parliamentary orator in all her long list 
of noble speakers and orators who had the original 
fire of genius and power and majesty of delivery to 
entitle him to compare with Patrick Henry, and that 
was his contemporary the great Lord Chatham. 
There are not wanting resemblances between these 
two great orators who sent their answering voices 
across the Atlantic in the cause of American liberty. 
There are suggestions of resemblance, too, in the 
eloquence of that fierce and terrible orator of the 
French Revolution which so soon followed ours. In 
Patrick Henry and Mirabeau we find the same 
immense passion, the same powerful and unbending 
will, the same overawing majesty. Hut the com- 
parison can not be followed ; for Henry, with all his 
enthusiasm and passionate energy of speech, was 
controlled by high moral principles, and was the 
champion of orderly, constitutio'nal liberty, while 
Mirabeau, who has been called a monster, displayed 
his vast powers in wonderful but inconsistent exhibi- 
tions in a wild pandemonium of public passion and 
anarchy. After all, the nearest resemblance is to 
that great and wonderful orator of antiquity who 
stood and spoke so grandly for Grecian liberty 
against the Macedonian tyrant, as our orator did for 
American liberty, against the tyrant of England. 
Patrick Henry will stand for our Demosthenes. 
There was the same simple and severe character, 
the same lofty patriotism, the same unquenchable 
love of liberty, and finally, the same kindling and 
overpowering eloquence that could thrill and ani- 
mate his countrymen to deeds of noble daring. 

2\ 



354 PATRICK HENRY. 



CONCLUSION. 

Thus have I endeavored to sketch the character 
and eloquence of the great patriot and orator to 
whom this country owes so much. To me it has 
not been an ungrateful task; I trust that to you it 
has not been an unprofitable one, thus to revive, at 
the opening of this centennial year, these memories 
of the great champion and advocate of independ- 
ence. It has been a lesson of patriotism which we 
need to learn ; it has been the study of a character 
whose contemplation will do us good. 

We have had great orators since the Revolution- 
ary period. Besides Fisher Ames, who was brilliant 
but early lost, Clay was magnetic and all-persuasive ; 
Webster was massive and godlike, Everett was full 
of classic grace, and Prentiss and Corwin had the 
true, original fires of genius. But the noble race of 
great speakers is dying out. In our forty millions 
we can not number as many as, more than one hun- 
dred years ago, sat in the House of Burgesses for the 
humble province of Virginia. Are they still here, 
waiting only for occasion to call them out ? Has the 
press, with its now all-pervading influence, driven 
them from the field of public discussion, and become 
the only leader and educator of the people ? I will 
not undertake to answer these questions. I can only 
see, as all men may, the plain fact of the decline of 
popular and parliamentary eloquence. We do not 
have orators because, for some reason, they are not 
wanted ; for the same great law of supply and 
demand holds good here as in the pettiest huckster- 
ings of commerce. Small credit, however, is it to 



PATRICK HENRY. 355 

our boasted civilization that oratory is so little 
valued, for it is the noblest of all intellectual accom- 
plishments. The Greeks and Romans, whom we call 
pagans, paid bounties to eloquence and gave their 
highest honors to orators. Can we say as much in 
this Christian land and in this nineteenth century .? 
A half dozen great speakers, not one of them in pub- 
lic life, linger superfluous in the evening of their 
days ; when they are gone who shall take their 
places ? One of these — the silver-tongued agitator, 
Wendell Phillips — has spoken in a style so charm- 
ing and brilliant and with a voice of such delightful 
cadence that as an orator, simply, he is entitled to 
rank with the greatest in our Pantheon. 

hV'llow citizens, we stand upon the threshold ot 
our Centennial. One hundred years of liberty ! 
Short time, indeed, in the history of nations, but 
long enough to show us some of our magnificent 
possibilities of power and empire^ ; long enough, too, 
to disclose to us the dread possibilities of national 
disaster and decline. As we keep the great jubilee, 
a re-united people, let us bow with pious reverence 
at the shrines of the noble men of the Revolution — 
soldiers, statesmen, and orators, who made us a 
nation. Their immortal names beam upon us from 
the heavens above, and like celestial luminaries shine 
forever on our pathwa\'. 

Some of the greatest of our dangers we have 
triumphantly passed. God alone may tell what 
others are still before us. But come what may in 
the future ; let the storm rage again as it raged 
before ; let the heavens again be black and men's 
hearts begin to sink within them; we know this — 



356 PATRICK HENRY. 

thank God — that our children, or our children's 
children, when that dark day shall come, can look up 
as we of this generation looked up into the serene 
and majestic face of Washington, and hear him say : 
" My countrymen, the preservation of the sacred 
fires of liberty and the destiny of the republican 
model of government are justly considered as deeply, 
perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted 
to the hands of the American people " — at bold and 
indomitable John Adams, and catch the ring of his 
manly voice, speaking such characteristic words as 
we may well imagine him to have uttered : " Sink or 
swim, survive or perish, I am for the declaration" — 
at the calm, philosophic Jefferson, as he writes the 
immortal words : " We hold these truths to be self- 
evident, that all men are created equal, and endowed 
by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, 
among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness" — and, finally, into the transfigured coun- 
tenance and the flashing eyes of Patrick Henry, and 
hear again his thrilling cry : " Give me liberty, or 
give me death." 



ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE.^ 



TiiK argument of Hon. Chas. S. May, for contestants, occupying 
four houi s in its delivery, is conceded on every hand to be the ablest 
ever made to a jury in this county; clearly and logically discussing 
the facts in the case, eloquently depicting the wrongs of Pierce to his 
first wife and children, and leaving an impression upon the jury which 
could not be shaken off. — Chicago Times. 

The proponents' case was opened by Arthur Brown, Esq., who spoke 
for two hours and a half. He was followed in the afternoon by Geo. 
M. Buck, for the contestants, who spoke for one hour, and prefaced, 
in strong, clear words, the main argument for the contestants, which 
was to be made by Hon. Chas. S. May. Hon. A. B. Maynard, of 
Detroit, was to re[ily to Mr. May, and the anxiety in town was intense 
to hear the efforts of these legal luminaries. 

Mr. May opened at half-past three in the afternoon, but long 
bef(5re he began every foot of space in the court room was filled with an 
eager and excited crowd, who breathlessly listened to every sentence of 
his argument. He appealed to the reason of the jury, and built from 
the facts a barrier which the most vehement endeavors of Mr. Maynard 
failed to break through. He spoke for four hours, his argument con- 
tinuing into the evening. His speech was spoken of in the highest 
terms, many pronouncing it the finest jury effort ever made at the 
Kalamazoo bar. 

Mr. Maynard opened at half-past eight on Tuesday morning, and 
spoke until noon. He appreciated the importance of the case and the 



1 \l Kalamazoo Circuit, February, 1876. This argument is too long too be given 
here in full. It has been thought best to make no abstract or condensation, but to 
give entire the last third of it, embracing the discussion of the important (juestion 
of Undue Influence. The other main question of mental capacity had been ex- 
haustively discussed under different heads. One hundred and fifty witnesses were 
sworn in the case, and the iury, after deliberating twenty-six hours, rendered a 
verdict breaking the will. 

357 



358 ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 

eloquent argument which he had to reply to, and did his utmost to 
break its force and effect. — Detroit Evening News. 

When Mr. Buck closed, a dense crowd had filled the court room, all 
anxious to hear Hon. Chas. S. May, who was to make the main argu- 
ment for the contestants, and who, it was expected, would be more 
brilliant and eloquent than ever before in a jury case. 

It was a scene long to be remembered in the history of the court. In 
the audience were large numbers of ladies, and when Mr. May rose at 
the close of the short intermission, a silence pervaded the room that was 
the forerunner of the rapt attention he received during the four hours 
in which he spoke. 

He was pale, anxious, and earnest. Each listener leaned forward to 
catch his opening sentences. He began slowly and calmly. But soon 
rousing with his subject he gathered the facts into logical order, and 
clothing them in eloquent words wove thein into a powerful and 
irresistible argument. 

At 5:30 P. M. the court adjourned until evening, when the crowd was 
more dense and excited than before. Mr. May continued his argument. 
The afternoon he had devoted to reasoning and convincing; in the 
evening he fairly blazed with excitement and eloquence. When he 
closed, the crowd so forgot they were in a court of justice as to attempt 
to cheer, and the impression was general that the contestants would be 
successful. We believe it to be the greatest jury effort of Mr. May's 
life, and one of the finest ever made in the State. — Kalamazoo 
Gazette. 

Gentlemen of the Jnry : 

I approach now, the discussion of the last main 
head, or division, of my argument — the question of 
undue infltience. 

And here, while the ground is entirely independ- 
ent in law and fact from the two other main propo- 
sitions which I have examined, I ask you this preg- 
nant and vital question at the outset : If in your 
judgment you should find this mental, physical, and 
moral weakness which I have depicted, not com- 
plete ; if it still leaves testamentary capacity, does it 
not make it more probable that this old man should 



ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 859 

fall under the influence of a strong-minded and artful 
woman ? Remember, it was upon this wreck of a 
man that the influence of this woman was exerted. 

What do we mean by undue influence ? I think, 
gentlemen, that this is the true test here : Is this 
such a will as Isaac Pierce would have made if he 
had been left alone and wholly to himself; if he had 
been left entirely free to carry out his own mind and 
intention .-' For I hold that this could not be a case 
of the exercise of a legitimate and healthful influence 
by the wife over the husband. Considering all the 
proved and unquestioned relations of these parties 
from the beginning to the end ; considering, too, 
their unhappy domestic state in the later years and 
his undisputed habits, I say it could not have been a 
case of fair influence — it was dictation, intimidation, 
coercion, or it was nothing. 

Was this will made as /w wanted to make it ? Did 
it express his real sentiments and feelings toward 
his children and the objects of his bounty.' 

Now, gentlemen, we are not left wholly in the 
dark as to the kind of will which Isaac Pierce in his 
calm, sober, and better moments desired to make. 

EXPRESSIONS OE PREVIOUS INTENTION. 

If we look into the testimony, we shall find that 
Isaac Pierce at many different times before this will 
was made gave expression to his real wish and inten- 
tion in regard to the final disposition of his property 
among his children and dependents. Let me recall 
some of these to your minds : — 

Away back in the early days upon the farm, as 
his sons Loren and Horace tell you. he used to 



360 ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 

encourage the boys in the midst of their toil by say- 
ing to them : '* You are not working for me, but for 
yourselves. All this property will be yours." And 
the boys believed him, and worked on hopefully 
through the long summer days. 

He told John Bloom, after his separation from his 
first wife, that he meant his property should all go to 
his children. 

He told Dr. Babcock, as long ago as 1856, when 
he was sick and thought he was going to die, that he 
had not made the provision he had intended for his 
first wife and children. He spoke particularly of 
Mrs. Parish, and said he had intended to do more for 
her ; and he begged the doctor to save his life and 
restore him to health, so that he should not die and 
leave this all undone. 

In 1855, two years after he put his first wife away, 
he told Geo. Whiting that "Aunt Katy should have 
all she needed ; that he had driven her away from 
the home she had helped to make, but calculated 
she should not come to want." 

These are some of his earliest expressions. That 
his good intentions were never changed, we shall 
see as we come nearer the time when this pretended 
will was made. 

In July, 1871, the very month it was made, he told 
his dausfhter, Lucinda Milliman, that he had never 
helped her, but he intended to do so. 

In the spring of 1871 he told Peter Bovee that if 
he was called away suddenly, he wanted things left 
to suit himself; that he was going to leave his prop- 
erty to his own children. 

In 1870 he told Henry Hobart and D. T. Dell that 



ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 3f)l 

he did not know as he had given his first wife 
enough. 

In 1871 he told Henr}' Troutwine he should give 
Emeline what she brought into the family. The rest 
of his property he designed his children should have, 
and they should share equally. He said he had 
never given his daughter Lucinda anything, and he 
intended to give her a good, nice property. He 
should do nothing for Jennings Hadley. 

Here, gentlemen, we have, in these expressions, 
the constantly repeated intentions of this man with 
regard to the final disposition of his property, for a 
period of twenty years, and clear down to the very 
month when he made this will ; and these expres- 
sions are always consistent — always to the same 
purpose. 

EXPRESSIONS AFTER THE WILL W^\S MADE. 

Now, if we turn again to the' testimony, we shall 
find that after the date of this will he continued still 
to talk in the same way as before ; continued still to 
express his intention to provide for his first wife and 
children. I grant that there are contrary and incon- 
sistent expressions proved after this time, but it is a 
most significant fact as bearing upon this question 
of undue influence that Isaac Pierce is still found 
talking in the old way, and telling his friends and 
neighbors of his intention to do things exactly con- 
trary to what he had been made to say and do in 
this will. 

So, gentlemen, we find him saying to William H. 
Tubbs, in June, 1872, that he had deeded one hun- 
dred acres of land for Emeline's support, — -that, you 



362 ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 

will remember, was a long time before the will, — 
and he was not going to give her any more. That 
he had made his will, but he never intended to die 
and leave it on the face of the earth. 

He told his daughter, Polly Clarke, the Sunday 
before he died, that he was going to make a division 
of his property among his children ; that he would 
either give Loren the Elwell forty or the Jones forty. 
The Elwell forty is given to Emeline in the will. 

He told Stephen Smith, a week before his death, 
that the Hadley boys should not get one cent of his 
property ; said he calculated to make a will, and 
leave his property equally among his children. 

He told James Shaver, in 1872, that he had made a 
will to suit his wife, but the next time he went to 
Kalamazoo he was going to make one to suit 
himself. 

He told Andrew J. Spicer, while in California in 
1872, that he had got to go home and settle up his 
business ; that he had made a will, but it did not suit 
him, and if he did not get home there would be 
''one of the d dest law suits on record." 

And finally, in that same year, 1872, he told 
Ephraim Bonner the same thing in language still 
more emphatic and blasphemous, saying that if he 
should die and leave that will, then " hell would be 
out for noon." 

From all this, gentlemen, we can see what kind of 
a will Isaac Pierce would have made if he had been 
let alone. That he did not make such a will as, from 
all these expressions, he clearly wished to make, was 
due to the dominating and controlling influence of 
another, substituting other purposes and intentions 



ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 363 

in the place of his own. So I say, gentlemen, that if 
you find this state of facts, if you find that this man's 
will did not express his own mind, but the mind of 
his wife Emeline, and was made in her interest, then 
it is a case of undue influence, and you must so pro- 
nounce it. 

EMELINE — THE WOMAN IN THE CASE. 

And now I come, i^entlemen, to discuss more 
clearly the relations of this woman Emeline to these 
facts. She is the woman in the case ; and not the 
first one, either, who has figured in cases like this, 
and been accused of exercising undue influence over 
men. Such cases and instances are very common in 
the courts. They are, indeed, of longer standing 
than the courts ; they are as old as human nature 
itself; for I do not forget that, according to the 
sacred legend, it was the first woman wjio unduly 
inlluenced the first man to eat of the forbidden 
fruit. 

I am to show you here the powerful influence of 
an artful and designing woman over a man of rough 
nature and strong passions ; a woman twenty years 
younger than the man, and first securing her influ- 
ence over him through the unlawful gratification of 
his strong and unregulated passions. 

HISTORIC INSTANCES —THE MISTRESSES OF KINGS. 

Is there any inherent improbability in such a case.' 
Why, gentlemen, history is full of instances like this. 
— instances where great monarchs and rulers of men 
have fallen, through the same source of human weak- 
ness, under the influence and control of the other 



364 ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 

sex. Who has not heard of the mistresses of kings, 
and the part they have played in the history of the 
world.'' Louis XIV of France was called ''The 
Grand Monarch " and ''Louis the Great," so splen- 
did was his long reign and so powerful was he among 
the sovereigns of the world ; and yet, though this 
man was an absolute monarch over France, and dic- 
tated law to all Europe, sending out his great mar- 
shals and armies to victorious fields of conquest, and 
ruling in his cabinet with arbitrary and autocratic 
will, he himself was conquered by the charms and 
blandishments of a solitary woman, — a woman with- 
out royal blood, a butcher's daughter, who ever after, 
until the day of his death, exercised supreme influ- 
ence over him, dictating war and peace, — even com- 
pelling him in the interest of her religious fanaticism 
to revoke that royal edict of Nantes, and let slip 
the dogs of religious persecution, deluging a whole 
region in innocent blood. 

I could give you many more signal instances of 
this kind. The very next successor of this great 
king of whom I have spoken, the next. Louis in that 
long line, had his Pompadour, as the other his Main- 
tenon ; another woman from humble life, who ruled 
the ruler of the nation with an artful and unbending 
will. And there was the English Charles II, with his 
famous mistress, and in our recent times the way- 
ward and romantic Lola Montez, the dancing girl 
who came to rule the king in a European court. 
Shakespeare, who has illustrated all human nature 
and passion, has drawn a powerful picture of wom- 
an's influence in his Lady Macbeth, who, urging her 



ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 3f)5 

guilty but hesitating lord to the terrible deed of 
blood, says to him : 

" Only look up clear; 
To alter favor ever is to fear; 

Leave all the res/ to nie.^'' 

Why, gentlemen, these counsel say to you that it 
is impossible that the wife of this man could have 
had this inOuence over him ; that Isaac Pierce was a 
self-willed, strong man. A strong man ! Well, was 
he stronger than Samson, who could tear down the 
gates of a city .'^ And yet Samson, gentlemen, was 
weak enough when his head reposed in the lap of his 
Delilah. So it was with Isaac Pierce. Rough and 
strong as he was by nature, he came at last like 
Samson, through the same channel of influence, to 
obey the will of an artful and designing woman. 

ISAAC PIERCE AND HIS FAMILY IN 1S.')2. 

Now, gentlemen, let us turn to this testimony, and 
see when and how this influence began. Let me 
take your minds back to 1852, and show you Isaac 
Pierce there with his family on the old homestead at 
Climax. Married to his first wife in the State of 
New York in 1824, he had removed with his young 
family to Michigan ten years later, and had settled 
down upon his first purchase of land in the beautiful 
region where he continued to live during all this his- 
tory, for nearly forty years, until the day of his 
death. At this time, 1S.')2, he had with him besides 
his wife, — "Aunt Katy," as she was afterward called, 
— six children ranging in years from sixteen up to 



366 ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 

twenty-seven, three boys and three girls. He was 
now about fifty years of age and the possessor of 
eight hundred and fourteen acres of land, eight hun- 
dred and sixty-nine acres being all he owned at the 
day of his death. 

The story of this family had been like the story of 
other pioneer families in this region, only a little 
rougher and harder. They began with little, and 
they worked hard, boys and girls alike, — the daugh- 
ters and the mother frequently working in the fields 
with the men ; and the testimony many times shows 
us " Aunt Katy " bringing with her own hands the 
family wood from the field to the house. "We all 
worked hard," say these children on the stand ; and 
so testify also all the witnesses who knew them in 
those early days. Isaac Pierce at this time, though 
a rough, austere man, seems not to have been an 
unkind father, and he was well disposed toward his 
family. Drinking had not got to be so settled a 
habit with him, and he worked hard with the rest. 
He had overcome all the difficulties of a new coun- 
try, and brought his family safe through all the trials 
and dangers of that new home ; his judgment had 
been good, his plans had worked well, and he was a 
man now in easy circumstances, and comparatively 
rich among so many of his less prosperous neigh- 
bors. 

THE BEGINNING OF TROUP.LE. 

But a great trouble was about to fall upon that 
quiet and peaceful family. In the late summer of 
that same year 1852, Isaac Pierce met this woman, 
then Mrs. Emeline Hadley, an interesting young 



ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 867 

widow, in her mourning weeds tor her husband who 
had suddenly died in the month of July, in the town 
of Pennfield, in the county of Calhoun, which was 
their home. .She met Pierce at Battle Creek, — it 
seems she knew him, at least by reputation, before 
— and applied to him to become administrator of her 
husband's estate. He seems to have been struck 
with her person and her request, and at once under- 
took the duty. And then commenced his relations 
and intercourse with her, destined to change the 
whole course and current of his after life. He began 
soon to make visits to Pennfield, which were fre- 
quently repeated, and we catch a glimpse of him 
defending her law suit at Battle Creek. 

SIGNING THE SEPARATION I'Al'ERS. 

Pierce is soon infatuated, and nothing can now 
stand in the way of his dreadful purpose. All his 
ungovernable passions are roused, and he turns 
fiercely upon the wife of his youth as an obstacle in 
the way of his new and unholy desires. You remem- 
ber that in the solemn night time, the youngest 
child, Lucinda, had heard her father's voice, in high 
and terrible words, demanding that her mother 
should consent to a separation, and leave her home 
and children forever. At last, by the most terrible 
threats and commands, by the use of language too 
shocking and awful for me to repeat, he compels her 
to come to Kalamazoo, where this same (ieo. Thomas 
Clark, the adviser and tool of Pierce, had drawn up 
the separation papers for her to sign. V^ou remem- 
ber these papers, gentlemen, with their false and 



368 ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 

lying preamble, " Whereas, unhappy difficulties have 
arisen between the said Isaac and his wife Cathar- 
ine." What difficulty had she made.'' 

The wretched wife at first could not sign the 
papers. She took the pen, officiously put into her 
hand by Clark, and then burst into tears, saying she 
could not do it ; "she could not sign away her home 
and children." The superservicable Clark is ready 
to urge her, to tell her of his brother's case in Eng- 
land, and how that was managed. Pierce stands by, 
overawing her by his presence and by the stern and 
unbending purpose which she sees written in his 
face. At length she yields, takes the pen, signs her 
name, and turns weeping and sorrowfully away. 
Then, with a heavy and broken heart she returns for 
a brief season to the home where she had worked so 
long and endured so much for her husband and her 
children. 

It was in the month of November that Pierce 
brought Mrs. Hadley into his family at Climax. Up 
to this time, these children tell you. Isaac Pierce 
had lived peacably and pleasantly enough with his 
wife. But a terrible domestic cloud had now begun 
to gather. Quarrels and high words began to be 
heard by the affrighted children between the father 
and mother. Pierce leaves his wife's bed ; he makes 
no conversation with her ; he does not treat her any 
longer as his wife, but instals Mrs. Hadley at the 
head of the table, and is even found in the night time 
sharing her room and bed. Aunt Katy passes 
around uncomplaining but sad, and frequently 
in tears. 



ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 369 

THE CULMINATION OF THE TRAGEDY. 

Finally the awful climax of her troubles comes, 
the day of fate and doom to this poor woman, when 
she is sent away forever from her home ; taken away 
by the orders of this infatuated and infuriated man, 
who had once solemnly sworn at the altar to love 
and cherish her ; taken with a few cheap and hum- 
ble articles of household furniture and sent, by a 
back way, over the hill to the little log house in the 
hollow which was to be her future abode ; taken 
while protesting and crying out in the agony of her 
soul that she could not go, that she could not thus 
leave the home she had worked so hard to make, and 
the children she had nourished and loved. 

How can I picture to you that scene of domestic 
desolation and ruin, that terrible scene of a wife's 
dethronement and banishment ? Gentlemen, I have 
heard the great actors and tragedians of this genera- 
tion who tread the mimic stage, and thrill and melt 
excited thousands with their delineations of human 
sorrow and passion ; but I have heard from the lips 
of Lucinda Milliman, on that witness stand, the story 
of a real tragedy in humble life, more pathetic and 
powerful than any imagined griefs of kings, or queens, 
or any catastrophe whatever of human greatness. 
That agonized wife and mother in the midst of her 
weeping children ; her tearful protestations and 
pleadings, the domoniac husband and father standing 
by, lost now to all feelings of gratitude and pity, and 
hurrying up the cruel preparations for her departure 
— oh! gentlemen, it was a spectacle to make the 
blessed angels weep ! Well might the wretched 
24 



370 ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 

mother have cried out in the homely but pathetic 
language of Michigan's own poet : — 

"Over the hill to the poorhouse — my children dear, good-by; 
Many a night I 've watched you when only God was nigh; 
And God will judge between us: but I shall ever pray 
That you may never suffer the half of what I do to-day." 

Gentlemen, a scene like this must melt and mov^e 
all human hearts. It brings to our minds that other 
scene enacted upon a royal stage, between crowned 
heads, over which the world has hung and wept for 
years, where a great emperor put away the wife of 
his youth, — the wife who had loved him and helped 
to place him on his throne. That separation and 
banishment has come to be one of the touching 
stories and tragedies of history ; but human nature 
is the same in farmhouse and palace, and this tragedy 
in humble life appeals as spontaneously and power- 
fully to the deepest and tenderest sympathies of all 
our hearts. How overmastering must have been the 
influence to drive this man to such a crime ! How 
cool and calculating the disposition of this woman, 
Emeline, who could look calmly on and witness it ! 
/ turn to you now, and ask yon this all-important 
question: If this woman zvho sits Jure could make 
Isaac Pierce do such a deed as this in the day of his 
strength and prinu\ could she not influence him in the 
day of his weakness and decline to make this will? 

Gentlemen, this was a horrid piece of business, 
blasting and withering to the good name of the liv- 
ing and the dead alike. And yet I have heard here 
a wretched plea in defense of it, — a plea put forth 
by this guilty party to it, — the plea that the ban- 
ished wife was not neat and tidy in the management 



ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 371 

of her household ! (iod of mercy, what a defense is 
this ! Was it not enoui^h for this poor old woman to 
suffer, to be exiled and driven from her home, to be 
crushed and outraged in her deepest affections, to 
have her life blasted by this great grief? Was not 
her cup already full ? Did it need that this insult 
should be added to all the rest before she dies ? And 
what do you think, i^entlemcn, of that disposition 
which prompted such a plea as this? "Aunt Katy 
worked hard," ''she labored faithfully for her hus- 
band and children," "she backed the wootl up to the 
house," "she did the best she could," — that is what 
the witnesses say. 

" She did as well as she could,'' reluctantly says 
one of the witnesses who comes here to heap this 
insult upon her old, gray head. Who could do bet- 
ter than that ? And was Isaac Pierce, from this tes- 
timony, the man to complain of untidiness in his 
wife ? Gentlemen, I dismiss this wretched plea with- 
out further words. The proponents are welcome to 
all they have made by it. 

AFTER YEARS — THE INFLUENCE OF EMELINE 
NEVER BROKEN. 

Gentlemen, the influence of this woman over Isaac 
Pierce was never broken during the twenty years 
she lived with him. Once having secured her con- 
trol over him, he was submissive and obedient ever 
after. She was the only person who ever ruled him. 
Sometimes he chafed a little under his chains, and 
complained to his friends, but the testimony no- 
where shows an instance where he confronted her or 
resisted her authority. 



3Y2 ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 

Gentlemen, this question must not be misunder- 
stood. Influence in its very nature is intangible ; it 
is not to be proved and demonstrated like a physical 
fact. It is a psychological fact, and must be proved 
after its order. A look, a word, a gesture — these 
may be its signs, and indicate its presence without 
the power to prove direct or flagrant acts, or words 
of command. Undue influence of one person over 
another is the domination of the will of the one over 
that of the other, and this condition may exist and 
continue without noise or friction, — a steady, silent, 
but nevertheless powerful force. 

So I say that this case is not to be decided by the 
number and strength of the separate instances of the 
exercise of undue influence which we have proved. 
The counsel ridicule and make light of these. But, 
gentlemen, I put the case upon a stronger basis than 
these instances: I rest it upon the general fact of the 
peculiar, yea, the guilty relations of these parties at 
the beginning ; upon the mastery which this woman 
then gained over Isaac Pierce through infatuation 
and through passion ; upon the proved continuance 
of that power so acquired, aided and constantly 
made more easy and secure by the continued decline 
of the man in bodily and mental strength, thus weak- 
ening his will and making it all the time less able 
to resist. 

INSTANCES OF UNDUE INFLUENCE. 

But in saying this, gentlemen, in taking this strong 
general ground upon this question, I do not, by any 
means, mean to admit that we have not proved 
instances of actual and tangible influence on the part 



ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILE CASE. 373 

of this woman. As you will readily see, such facts 
must always be difficult to prove, hidden and con- 
cealed, as they ordinarily are. by domestic retire- 
ment and privacy. In the case here we can not call 
upon this woman and her children — the later family 
of Pierce — to prove them, and so we are compelled 
to rt-ly upon testimony from the outside. But with 
all these difficulties in the way, see what we have 
proved, tending to show the great influence which 
this woman, Kmeline, had over Isaac Pierce. I 
recapitulate only the \ital substance of what the 
witnesses say : — 

1. Her Acts and Expressions. — Polly Clark tells 
you that she heard Emeline forbid Pierce going to 
Battle Creek when he wanted to ; and he minded 
her, and did not go. 

Loren Pierce says she overawed his father, and 
prevented him giving the deed to witness which he 
had promised. 

Esquire Gutches testifies that the night before 
they were to start for California the first time, she 
refused to stir a step until IMerce should settle with 
James Milliman ; and she carried her point. 

W'm Webster says that luneline broke up a trade 
which he had made with Pierce for a horse ; would 
not let him ha\e the horse, and ordered him off 
the place. 

Thomas P^ldrcd heard her say to Pierce, " Vou 
won't get rid of me as you did of Aunt Katy. I will 
stick to you until you are as dead and cold as a 
wedge." 

John Radford tells you that when the new house 
was built she wanted the four-lighted windows, and 



374 ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 

Pierce the twelve-lighted. He got the latter kind, 
but she made him take them back and get the 
other. 

Capt. Barney Vosburg, a prominent witness for 
proponents, tells you that when Pierce was away 
from home, Emeline was invariably with him. 

2. His Conduct and Expressions. — Henry Trout- 
wine swears that Pierce complained to him about 
Emeline interfering with his business : said she 
wanted to control his business, and make him do 
things he did not want to do. 

Elias Wright testifies that Pierce told him he could 
not let him have a piece of land to sow to wheat, 
because it would make disturbance in the family ; 
that he did not dare to do it. 

Fredrick Stellay says that Pierce complained to 
him about Emeline. Said he might as well live in 
hell as with her ; she would not let him do as he 
wanted to. He once complained that she would not 
let him bet at a horse race! Gentlemen, isn't that 
carrying dictation a good ways .'' 

Levi Taylor says she interfered when Pierce was 
settling with Billington, and at another time refused 
to let him go to Battle Creek to pay a debt. 

James Shaver swears that when Emeline wanted 
some money for a sewing-machine agent, Pierce went 
into the house with her ; and he came out, saying he 
might as well live in hell as not to let her have what 
money she wanted. At another time Pierce com- 
plained that his wife had forbidden every place in town 
selling him liquor, and that he could not get a drop. 
Gentlemen, what a commentary is that upon this 
man's degradation, and the complete helplessness of 



ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 375 

his situation in this woman's hands ! He could be 
no longer his own master after that. 

John Christol testifies that Tierce told him he had 
a hell on earth, and had to make things to suit 
his wife. 

Wm. Webster says that on the morning of the 
2!tth of July, 1871, Pierce told him that he was going 
to make a will, to see if it would not satisfy his wife. 

And finally, Caleb Sweetland, Jr., one of the pro- 
ponents' own witnesses, and an intimate acquaintance 
of Emeline, and a friend of her family, tells you that 
Pierce used to say that " he could do nothing with- 
out mother." 

THIS INFLUENCE EXERTED TO OBTAIN THE WILL. 

Now, gentlemen, I think that you will agree with 
me that here is a very considerable mass of testi- 
mony tending to show the possession of a strong and 
powerful inlluence by this womAn over this man. 
The cjuestion naturally arises now : Did she exert 
this influence upon him in order to obtain this will .-* 

In the first place, I ask you, gentlemen, what 
would be natural and probable in such a case .-* Con- 
sider her situation and that of her children by Pierce. 
Consider the grave legal questions and doubts which 
might arise in regard to her true relations to him 
and to his property, to the legality of her marriage, 
to the legitimacy of her children. Lender such cir- 
cumstances what would be natural for her to do ? 
Would she not desire, above all other things, that 
Pierce should make his will, and thus settle these 
grave questions and doubts forever, and confine the 
property to her and her children .' Remember the 



37() ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 

other wife was still living, and her children, these 
contestants, were all about her. 

Why, gentlemen, human nature itself answers these 
questions. This woman could not have been true to 
her own interest and to the interests of her children 
if she had not exerted her uttermost power and influ- 
ence to obtain a will such as she needed for her pro- 
tection. Do you believe her when she swears that 
she never spoke to Pierce in her life about a will, and 
did not even know what he was coming to Kalama- 
zoo for when the will was made .'' 

Gentlemen, on this subject, it is a most significant 
fact that this will is made in the interest of this 
woman and her children, and that, too, in the very 
face of all these declarations and expressions by 
Isaac Pierce of a contrary intention. What do you 
suppose induced him thus to forget and deny his 
own words, to forget his duty as a man and a father, 
and to disinherit his own blood .'' What power drove 
from his mind the remembrance of these more than 
orphaned children of his unfortunate daughter, Mrs. 
Parish.'' Ah, gentlemen, this is not such a will as, on 
what he thought was his death-bed, he told Dr. 
Babcock he wanted to make. 

''TO KEEP. PEACE IN THE FAMILY." 

No, gentlemen, this will was wrung from Isaac 
Pierce in his old age, in his weakness, in his sickness, 
in his intoxication, by the ceaseless and persistent 
importunity and authority of this woman. Against 
her oath, denying all this, saying she never spoke a 
word to him on the subject, I put the oft-repeated 
declarations of Isaac Pierce himself, I call him from 



ARGUMENT IN TIIK PIERCE WILL CASE. 377 

the grave to confront and impeach her. You will 
believe him when he tells you that this will was not 
his, but hers ; that it was made to please her, and 
get rid of her ceaseless importunity — "to keep 
peace in the family." 

llow many times did this old man use that expres- 
sion, as he complained in the bitterness and sorrow 
of his heart of his domestic troubles. Besides the 
many other things which he had to do "'to keep 
peace in the family" was the making of this very 
will. You have seen how for this purpose of keep- 
ing peace, as he himself said, he wanted his son 
Loren to pay him the thousand dollars for the land, 
telling him he would pay it back to him ; how, 
according to the testimony of the venerable Moses 
Hodginan, he exacted the mortgage from Milliman 
and his daughter, privately assuring them that they 
would never need to pay it ; how he took the note 
from his other son-in-law, Clark, telling him it did 
not need to be stamped, as he only wished it to sat- 
isfy his wife. In all these instances he used this 
same expression — " to keep peace in the family." 
But more than all this, he told John Christol, in 
May, 1871, that he had got to make a will to suit his 
wife — "to keep peace in the family." He told 
Ephraim Bonner in the month following, that he was 
going to make a will to suit Mrs. Pierce and " to keep 
peace in the family." And finalh-, on the evening of 
that very 20th day of Jul}-, when returning from 
Kalamazoo, he told George Whiting at Galesburg 
that he had been to town doing some business "to 
keep peace in the family;" that he had "signed 
the death warrant of his first wife and children." 



378 ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 

How significant and impressive is such testimony 
as this ! 

Again I ask you, gentlemen, can you doubt that it 
was the influence of this woman, her importunity, 
her demands, her authority and control, which induced 
and coerced this weak and worn-out old man to 
make this will ? She was twenty years younger than 
he, in the full vigor of her prime ; a keen, artful, self- 
poised, and calculating woman, as her whole appear- 
ance on this trial abundantly shows. She was just 
the woman to hold with a steady and iron grasp the 
power which, long before, she had acquired over 
this man. 

NO RATIFICATION OF THE WILL. 

Need I say to you, gentlemen, that this will once 
made under these circumstances could never be rati- 
fied by Isaac Pierce.'' I know the counsel on the 
other side have made this point, and they will ask 
the court to charge you that you may find a ratifica- 
tion of this will by Pierce, no matter under what 
circumstances it was made. 

Now I take issue with the gentlemen most de- 
cidedly on this question, and I say in the first place, 
that as a matter of law there could be no such thing 
as a ratification in this case. And for the simple 
reason that if this paper was signed by Isaac Pierce 
when not in his right mind, or when intoxicated, or 
when under the influence of another, then it was not 
his act in the law. it was not his will, but was void 
and of no effect whatever. It is void, in such case, 
because there is no consenting mind or will. Cer- 
tainly, I must be right in saying that if this man 



ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 379 

signed the paper when his reason was dethroned, or 
when his mental faculties were drowned in liquor, 
and when he had no such sound mind and memory 
as the law requires, that then his act was void ; and 
being void, that the law, reason, and common sense 
all would unite that he could not afterward, by any- 
thing he might say, give any effect to that which 
was wholly without effect and worthless in the begin- 
ning. The law is always founded upon reason and 
common sense. A man may ratify an act which he 
does while under some legal disability ; as for in- 
stance, a contract made before he was twenty-one 
years of age ; but he can never ratify that which he 
never did. In other words, in all cases of what the 
law calls ratification, it is always supposed that the 
act was an intelligent and conscious one, and that 
the disability was only from the outside. So I say 
that here there is no question of ratification at 
all. It is a misnomer and an ajiomaly to say that 
there can be any such thing as the ratification of a 
void will. 

Hut if it be urged that Tierce could ratify the will 
if it was simply made while under undue influence, 
then to this, in the second place, I reply that as a 
matter of fact the testimony shows that the influence 
of this woman was a continuing influence ; that it 
remained, and was never broken while this man 
lived. So the answer is complete and as broad as 
the proposition, h^or if the influence was so great 
as to be undue in law at the time when the will was 
made, then before he could ratify the act of making 
it he must be shown to have escaped or recovered 
from this influence and to be in a situation where he 



380 ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 

could speak his own mind and exercise his free will. 
When, I ask you, is this time proved to have been ? 
But, ^^entlemen, the court will tell you that there 
can be no such thingf as a ratification of this will ; 
that it must stand or fall upon the man's condition 
at the time it was made, and that nothing he could 
afterward say or do would breathe the breath of life 
into this paper, if at this time Isaac Pierce was not 
in the possession of a sound mind and memory, or 
was unable to exercise his own free will. Something 
can not be made out of nothinq- ; nor can so solemn 
and important a paper as a man's last will and testa- 
ment, which the law requires to be in writing, and 
duly and formally declared, attested, signed, and 
sealed, be revived from legal disability or death by 
a mere informal or casual verbal acknowledgment, 
made in reckless, blasphemous, or drunken speech. 

THE WILL UNNATURAL AND UNJUST. 

Gentlemen, there is still left one great test or prin- 
ciple to apply to this will in order to see whether it 
be the solemn and deliberate act of the testator, and 
that is the test of its humanity and its justice. I 
know a man has a right under the law to make an 
unjust will ; but 1 know, too, that when the question 
is whether he has made a will, and that question be 
at all in doubt, you may look into the provisions of 
the instrument itself to see whether they be contrary 
to natural justice, so that it may be determined 
whether the man would be likely to make such a 
disposition of his property. A will that is inhuman 
and unnatural is at the same time unreasonable, irra- 
tional, and improbable. 



ARGUMENT IX THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 881 

I have therefore, gentlemen, the right to urge this 
consideration upon you. and to ask you to look to 
this question of justice. Need I take one moment 
to show that this will is grossly unjust.' Here are 
these children by the first wife, this man's first chil- 
dren, who helped him to accumulate this property, 
practically disinherited, their mother turned out of 
doors, while this woman h>meline, the tempter and 
destroyer of this honu', and her children, who have 
never earned or added anything to the estate, are 
given everything. Why should Isaac Pierce thus 
forget these older children .'' They had worked hard 
for him ; they were poor, and needed assistance as 
he well knew, and he had no feeling against them. 
Why should he cut them off in their poverty .' 

Why, gentlemen, all this evidence shows that these 
contestants had been most generous and forbearing 
in their conduct toward their father. They had 
always been respectful to him --^ even when his life 
had been such as not to command respect from the 
world ; they had been kind and attentive to him 
when suffering from accidents or sickness ; and 
finally they exercised a degree of forbearance when 
their mother was sent away, which seems, at first 
view, almost shocking to our human sympathies. 
The counsel has dwelt upon the fact that some of 
these contestants assisted their father in procuring 
the Indiana divorce from their mother. They did 
this, no doubt, thinking it was better than the open 
shame and danger of his living in adultery with this 
woman in the midst of a community excited and 
threatening a prosecution ; but notwithstanding this 
plain and perhaps sufficient motive which I can plead 



382 ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 

in their excuse, the fact remains that they rendered 
a much-needed service to their father. 

Why should Isaac Pierce forget all this when he 
came to make his will ? And there was his poor, 
unfortunate daughter in the asylum, and her help- 
less and more than orphaned children, whom he 
loved, and whom he told Dr. Babcock he intended to 
provide for. Why should he forget them ? Ah ! 
gentlemen, these questions can not be answered sat- 
isfactorily on any ordinary principles of human 
nature or natural affection. He could not have for- 
gotten these claims upon his bounty and his grati- 
tude if he had been in his right mind or in the free 
exercise of his will. 

O ! it needed all the audacity of the counsel to say 
that this will was just. Gentlemen, the argument is 
an insult alike to your reason and your humanity. 
If this be a just will, then where can one be found 
which is unjust .'' If this be a humane and a natural 
will, then where can be found a will which is inhuman 
and unnatural ? Look, gentlemen, at these opposing 
parties before you. Here on the one side are these 
contestants, the first children of Isaac Pierce, the 
poorly clad and hard-working boys and girls of that 
early, desolate home ; now past middle life, some of 
them verging toward old age, browned and bent by 
toil, in rusty and homely garb, still hard working 
and poor; cheated and kept out of their just inherit- 
ance, which now they so much need, by this relent- 
less and grasping woman who brought calamity and 
sorrow into their father's household. There, on the 
other side, sits the author of all this trouble, sur- 
rounded by her daughters, the later children of Isaac 



ARGUMENT IN THE ITEKCE WILL CASE. 383 

Pierce, dressed in all modern extravagance and 
finery, — gay, frivolous, useless, modern young women, 
reared in luxury and educated at boarding schools. 
Tell me. which of these twain have earned the right 
to enjoy this property .'' 

CONCLUSION. 

Gentlemen, this man violated the physical and the 
moral law alike ; and he reaped the terrible penalty. 
For that great wrong to the wife of his youth his 
remorse was keen and lasting. It breaks out here 
and there, frequently, through the testimony. How 
touching and overwhelming was that incident related 
by Smith Lawrence, when Pierce passed his wronged 
and injured wife on the highway as the sun was set- 
ting, and gazing after her, exclaimed, as the tears 
came to his eyes : "L would give all that I am worth 
— I would give the whole town of Climax if I owned 
it, if I had li\ed with that woman ! " There was con- 
science — there were the scourges of memory at 
work. At last, bent and broken under the heavy 
load of moral guilt, of violated physical law and 
domestic trouble, with mind impaired and shattered, 
and confused by drink, under the powerful influence 
of another, he put his unsteady hand to a will which 
outrages every sentiment of human affection and 
controvenes every principle of natural justice. 

Gentlemen, it is your solemn prerogative now to 
correct and repair this terrible w^ork. You must set 
aside this wretched mockery of a will. Let this 
man's property descend to all his children, to the 
deserving and the undeserving alike. These con- 
testants will then only share equally with the chil- 



384: ARGUMENT IN THE PIERCE WILL CASE. 

dren of this usurping woman, and she herself will 
remain the dead man's widow in the law, to the 
exclusion of that early, lawful wife, who still lives to 
suffer from man's injustice.' What more ought these 
proponents to ask or expect .'' 

Gentlemen, I beg of you to pause and reflect before 
you render a verdict sustaining this will. You have 
it now in your power to do a great and supreme act 
of justice, an act noble and godlike, and worthy of 
your sympathies as men and your oaths as jurors. 
It is the glory of a jury to be able to execute some 
portion of that justice which belongs supremely to 
God, — to vindicate the cause of the weak and op- 
pressed, and to blast and shatter the power of the 
oppressor. In the name, then, of common justice 
and humanity, I appeal to you for a verdict for these 
contestants. Let no preconceived opinions, no preju- 
dice, no obstinacy in your jury-room, no specious 
pleas of any kind, keep you from this high duty. 
For in doing this you will be true to your oaths, true 
to the law, true to what this dead man would say, 
could he now speak to you from the grave, and true 
to the eternal principles of justice and right. 



REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT.' 



Fellow Citizens : I am here at the request and 
appointment of the State Democratic Committee of 
Ohio to speak to you upon the political questions 
before the country. A stranger to your people, a 
citizen from another State, I have come too far to 
trifle with this occasion ; and so you will let me 
speak to you to-night seriously and earnestly, but I 
trust at the same time candidly, upon some of the 
most vital and important issues which enter into this 
election. My idea of the true object and end of polit- 
ical discussion is that it should consist of fair and 
candid argument, and nothing is worthy or of any 
real value which is not addressed to the reason and 
conscience of the citizen. Mr. Lincoln was the tru- 
est and best type of the political stump orator. He 
was always truthful, fair, and candid, as well as log- 
ical and earnest. He never trifled with the people 
nor abused their confidence, but always addressed 
their better reason and feelings. 

And so in Mr. Lincoln's spirit, if not with his abil- 
ity, let me now speak to you. You, citizens of Ohio, 
are a part of the great jury of the American people, 
who are sworn upon a thousand precious memories of 
the past to render an honest and true verdict between 
these political parties on the seventh of November 
next. The great argument is being made to you by 



' Speech at Cleveland, Ohio, Oct. 4, 1876. 

25 385 



<?86 REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 

the advocates of both parties, and you are weighing 
and considering all that is being said. Nowhere else 
in this wide world, save in our own beloved country, 
can such a spectacle be witnessed as the people, in 
their primary capacity, settling great questions of 
state, elevating and pulling down political parties 
and public men, and dictating policies for the guid- 
ance of their country. This is indeed the sover- 
eignty of the people, and it is the high privilege and 
glory of Americans only. 

A prerogative so high and solemn as this should be 
exercised with a full and deep sense of the responsi- 
bility which it carries with it. The citizen should 
rise above all party prejudice, passion, or dictation, 
and put these questions alone to his conscience : 
Which one of these parties promises best and surest 
for the public safety, honor, and weal ? Where shall 
my vote be cast so as most surely and effectually to 
rebuke public corruption and save the Republic from 
dishonor .'' We want less of party in our politics and 
more of patriotism and country. Parties, at the best, 
are mere public conveniences ; they are nothing, and 
worse than nothing, unless they minister to the pub- 
lic good. When they outlive their usefulness or grow 
corrupt, they ought to die and be swept from the 
earth. Away with party when party no longer stands 
for the good of the country. 

And no party ever has any claim upon the people, 
except for what it is doing or will be able to do for 
the public good. We hear a great deal nowadays 
about the history of parties, and the record of par- 
ties, but all this, fellow citizens, is really out of order 
and foreign to the real issue. Parties are not to be 



REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 387 

entrusted with power for what they have done in the 
past, but for what they will be able to do in the future. 
This is always a great, practical question, and never 
a question of sentiment at all. Statesmanship and 
political economy are intensely practical thine^s, and 
do not deal much in mere sentiment. Gratitude on 
the one hand and condemnation on the other may do 
very well when we talk of individual men, but par- 
ties should never be voted up out of gratitude or 
voted down out of revenge. It is not what they 
did in the past upon just issues which are dead that 
should control, but what they are doing now and 
what they will do hereafter if we give them the 
power. 

THE ONLY ISSUE, HONEST GOVERNMENT. 

P'ellow citi/.ens, the only great issue of this cam- 
paign is the issue of honest government. Take the 
platforms of the two political parties and examine 
them however closely, and you shall find no issue 
made between them. All the great issues springing 
out of slaver)', of the war, of reconstruction, have 
passed away ; they belong to the dead past. In the 
past fifteen years great questions have been met and 
settled between the j)arties ; great political battles 
have been fought upon issues of transcendent impor- 
tance. But of those contests, and of many of the 
actors in them, we may say in the language of the 
poet : — 

"The knights aic dust, 
Their swords are rust, 
Their souls in heaven, we trust.'' 



388 REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 

Let the dead past bury its dead. We are acting in 
the living present, and the great duty of to-day is to 
see to it that the country be rescued from incompe- 
tent and dishonest hands. 

On all the great issues between the parties in the 
past I was a Republican. I was an antislavery boy 
before the Republican party was born. I should be 
a Republican again if those great questions were now 
at issue. But they have long been settled, settled for- 
ever, and no man can tell me of a single Republican 
principle which I abandon in supporting Samuel J. 
Tilden for the presidency. Is there a Republican 
here to-night who can stand up and point out a sin- 
gle plank in any Republican platform of any year in 
the past which I should violate in voting for Tilden 
and reform ? 

Fellow citizens, let us lay aside party prejudice 
and passion, and listen to calm reason. Let no man 
be afraid of the question of consistency. Names are 
nothing ; principles are everything. The name 
Democrat, intrinsically, is as good as the name 
Republican. It is not the name that should con- 
cern us, but what the name stands for. Let no man 
be afraid to do his duty because of a name. Let no 
Republican citizen make the mistake of supposing 
that his Republican principles of the past require 
him to stand for the Republican name after it has 
ceased to represent national purity and honor. 

Let me speak to you, then, fellow citizens, not of 
the past, but of this great and overshadowing ques- 
tion of the present, — the question of political, ad- 
ministrative reform in the government. The Repub- 
lican party is on trial ; not for its conduct before the 



REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 889 

war or in the war ; not for its conduct in the days of 
reconstruction, but for its later history and its pres- 
ent corruptions. No party, as I have already said, 
has any rif^ht to claim the support of the people 
for what it has done upon past issues. It is always 
a new question, and the party in power has no 
right to claim a new indorsement of the people 
without a full showing of present worthiness and 
promises of further continuance in well-doing which 
can be believed. The Republican party is on trial, 
and is arraigned for great and manifold derelictions 
of public duty, and for great and continued official 
corruption. I arraign it here to-night upon its recent 
record, under the administration of President Grant, 
and I charge it with being unworthy longer of the 
confidence of the American people. I shall speak 
that which all men know, and whjch all honest men 
have recently conceded. 

THE PAST FOUR YEARS. 

Four years ago most of the great leaders of the 
Republican party, after unavailing protests against 
its growing corruptions, withdrew from it, followed 
by tens of thousands of the best men in the organ- 
ization. These men went apart from it and organ- 
ized the Liberal Republican movement of 1872. I 
am not here to speak of tlie result of that movement, 
or to give the reasons for the disastrous defeat which 
followed that campaign. I begin at the beginning in 
these recent years, and I show you the fact of this 
large and most influential secession from the Repub- 
lican party, in order to emphasize the point that four 
years ago that party was charged by a large and 



390 REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 

most respectable part of its own members with being 
too corrupt longer to be tolerated in power. Two 
years later, in 1874, the disaffection and dissatisfac- 
tion had grown to such proportions that the party- 
was overwhelmingly defeated in the elections of that 
year, and emphatically condemned by the American 
people. You know the record and exposures since 
that time. You know the fearful revelations which 
the past year has brought to light of widespread pub- 
lic and official- corruption. 

Is the party, then, any better now than it was four 
years or two years ago ? Who does not know, indeed 
that it has been proved to be worse than any man, 
then dared suppose .■* Fellow citizens, do I not speak 
truly ? Do I exaggerate or misstate the facts of the 
past four years of our political history ? Who does 
not know these facts ? Who does not know that the 
great Republican party has been dishonored and 
brought to shame even in the house of its friends, 
and been made to confess its public misdeeds, and to 
crave the indulgence and forgiveness of the Ameri- 
can people b / appealing to its earlier record and 
parading its services in the war .'' The question now 
is, Shall we continue this party longer in power ? 

THE CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY. 

But before the American people conclude to answer 
that question in the affirmative, they should look 
about them upon the condition of the country. 
When before was such a state of things witnessed 
in this country ? On every hand the industries of 
the country locked in the paralysis of hard times. 
Qn every hand great business depression, the wheels 



REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 391 

and spindles of manufacture silent and still, the sails 
of commerce idly flapping at the masthead, the grass 
growing upon neglected streets and wharves. Every 
department of our great business machinery suffers. 
All classes of honest citizens are involved in loss and 
distress. There have been periods of commercial 
disaster before in our history, — times when credit 
was impaired and great commercial structures top- 
pled to the ground ; but never before was the pros- 
tration so general and so long continued. It is not 
the rich man now, the man with large fortune, who 
is alone involved. The gaunt hand is now out- 
stretched toward the humblest abode, and the wolf 
howls at the door of hovel and palace alike. Every- 
where, in city and town and country, here in your 
beautiful streets as on the rich acres of your great 
Western Reserve, the poor man is crying out in the 
agony of his soul : Where is the money coming from 
to pay off the incumbrance on the roof which shel- 
ters my wife and children ? Where can the work be 
found which shall bring me the bare necessaries of 
life for those I love .-' God of mercy ! what cries are 
these in a land like this — a land full of plenty, a land 
full of labor which is needed to be done ! Think of 
it — labor, willing labor, labor of American hands, 
starving for bread ! It is a terrible picture, and it 
has a terrible background, when we see that beyond 
and behind this paralyzed trade and stagnant busi- 
ness there is everywhere widespread official corrup- 
tion, extravagant expenditure, and grinding taxation. 
Now, fellow citizens, this dreadful state of things 
did not come by chance. It has a cause, it has a 
good many causes, and some of these are political as 



892 REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT, 

well as commercial. It will not do to lay all this 
public distress to causes not affected by the agency 
of the government. There is bad statesmanship at 
the bottom of this state of things, bad management 
of the finances by the administration and the party 
in power. In all free, constitutional governments it 
has ever been the rule to hold the party in power 
responsible for a condition of public business stagna- 
tion and calamity. And this is a right and just rule, 
for the party in power has the whole shaping of leg- 
islation affecting the business interests of the coun- 
try, the whole management and control of all financial 
measures and policies. 

Now, I say the Republican party has been guilty 
of bad statesmanship, of bad public management of 
our financial affairs, and is largely, if not wholly, 
responsible for the state of things we see in the 
country around us. Capital, they say, is locked up, 
idle and useless to itself or anybody else, because there 
is a " want of confidence," to use the commercial term. 
Want of confidence in what.'' Do I mistake in an- 
swering, Want of confidence in Republican states- 
manship, in Republican management ? Capital is 
justly afraid of incompetent tinkers in finance, of reck- 
less financial legislation, of wasteful public extrava- 
gance. In short, of the statesmanship that has ruled 
at Washington for the past few years. These are 
some of the things, I take it, which capital is afraid 
of, and these are some of the leading causes of the 
hard and stringent times through which we are 
passing. 



REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 393 

A CHANGE DEMANDED. 

Now, fellow citizens, in view of this most dei)lora- 
ble state of thin<js, in view of this amazin^^ official 
corruption, this plain maladministration on the one 
hand and this business stagnation and universal de- 
pression and distress upon the other, everybody has 
said, everybody has conceded, up to within a very 
short time, that we must have a change — that the 
country must have some relief. Do I not speak truly 
here also? Have not Republicans, equally with 
Democrats, admitted this ? Is it not true that be- 
fore the national conventions of the two parties the 
leading newspapers and organs of public opinion in 
tlie Republican party frankly confessed the short- 
comings of the organization, the corruptions of the 
administration, and promised that the party should 
cut aloof from the administration, and give the coun- 
try, in its nominations and its platform, a guaranty 
of reform .-* Did not these organs say, and was it not 
repeated all over the country by the men in the party 
who pretended to be honest and conscientious, that 
unless a new leaf could be turned over and such 
guaranty given, that the party would be defeated, 
and ought to be defeated ? You know that this is 
the case, and that I could read to you the abundant 
evidence of these facts from the leading Republican 
newspapers of the country. Who pretended, what 
Republican had the hardihood to pretend, as lately 
as last March, for instance, that the administration of 
President Grant was deserving of the confidence of 
the country.? What candid Republican would not 
admit, then, the corruption and disgrace of his party ? 



394 REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 

A CHANGE PROMISED BY THE REPUBLICAN 
PARTY. 

Well, I say, they promised reform, and all the bet- 
ter elements of the party rallied to the standard of 
Mr. Bristow, who had, as secretary of the treasury, 
done a work of reform which entitled him to the con- 
fidence of the country. So the good elements in the 
Democratic party rallied to the standard of the great 
reform governor of New York, who also, in his high 
office, as well as before as a private citizen, had given 
abundant evidence of his ability and his willingness 
to grapple with and overthrow the gigantic abuses 
and corruptions of the times. 

Here were good promises made by both parties, 
and the country waited to see how they would be ful- 
filled at Cincinnati and St. Louis. The party which 
should be true to reform was evidently to win in the 
presidential battle. So the two hundred independent 
citizens, representing the large and rapidly growing 
independent element and sentiment in the country, 
who met at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York in 
May last, thought and resolved; and that conference, 
as it was called, was unanimous in its public and pri- 
vate expression that the two great parties of the 
country were to be held to this test and to be judged 
by it. I speak what I personally know, for I was a 
member of that body, when I say that it was fully 
and clearly understood that if the Republican Con- 
vention at Cincinnati should fail to nominate Mr. 
Bristow upon the issue of reform, presented as he 
was squarely upon that issue, and the Democratic 
party at St. Louis should nominate Governor Tilden 



REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 395 

then, as representing the independent political senti- 
ment of the country, we were to support him. Carl 
Schurz himself put this pledge into the address which 
we adopted, and clinched it, and made it doubly 
strong and sure, by expressly telling the country 
that we would not support any compromise or expe- 
diency candidate whatever, and picturing Governor 
Hayes, of Ohio, as exactly the kind of a man we 
would not vote for. 

I shall not here go into an argument with Mr. 
Schurz upon the most lame and incompetent conclu- 
sion to which he has since come. The weakness and 
inconsistency of his position is so evident that no 
argument is required — only pity ; nothing more. I 
am happy to know, however, that his following is 
very small indeed among independent men, and 
smaller still among the men of his own national- 
ity. Thank God, the liberty-loA^ing Germans of this 
country are too honest and too intelligent to be 
misled by any leader, however formerly admired 
or beloved. They came from a land of high intel- 
ligence, from a land full of literature and thought, 
from a land distinguished for bold and independent 
thinkers as well as for great warriors and statesmen. 
No blind Samson can lead them under the rotten and 
falling pillars of the Republican party. 

But I was speaking of these promises of the two 
parties and the practical test to which they were be- 
ing held by the independent men of the country. I 
address myself especially to such men here to-night, 
and by independent men I mean, also, honest Repub- 
licans who had three months ago become disgusted 
with their party management and tired of the tyr- 



396 REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 

anny of their party leaders and the corruptions of 
the men in power. Did you not, down in your hearts, 
resolve that if Bristow could not be nominated, if he 
could be thrown overboard contemptuously in a 
Republican National Convention, in full view of his 
own record and the great necessities of the party and 
the country — did you not resolve, I say, that in that 
event you had cast your last vote for the Republi- 
can ticket, and that you would break away forever 
from the corrupt organization ? And did you not 
say in your heart that it would be a shame if the 
Republicans could treat Bristow in that way, and the 
Democrats could nominate Tilden ? 

THE PROMISE BROKEN. 

Now, fellow citizens, need I ask which party best 
kept its faith with the country and the people, and 
best fulfilled its pledge of reform ? You know the 
history of the two conventions. You know that Bris- 
tow was not nominated — that he did not get one fifth 
of the votes of the delegates, and you know that Gov- 
ernor Tilden was nominated, easily nominated, by 
more than a two-thirds vote, according to the cus- 
tom and tradition of the party. 

Well, then, the first great test was met, and while 
the Republicans lamentably failed, and nominated a 
man for mere expediency, a mere compromise candi- 
date, a figurehead simply, to hold the party together, 
the Democrats, on the other hand, triumphantly met 
the test and filled it, and nominated the great reform 
candidate over the combined and venomous opposi- 
tion of all the worst elements in the party. 

So, fellow citizens, with these candidates, nomi- 



REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 397 

nated in this way, the two great parties come before 
the country — a country full of public distress and 
demanding relief and change. The citizen who 
would not throw away his vote must make his 
choice between the two — there is no other option. 
Neither party is perfect, the masses of both are 
equally honest; but which one of these parties has 
best kept its recent promises of reform, and which is 
it now safest and best to vote for ? These are the 
questions which the honest citizen and voter, looking 
only to the good of the country, will i)ut to himself. 

NOT A CONTEST BETWEEN THE DEMOCRATIC AND 
REI'UIUTCAN PARTIES IN THE OLD SENSE. 

But in looking at these parties as they thus come 
before the country, let me disabuse my honest Repub- 
lican friend, who is still troubled about the matter of 
names, of a great fallacy which is made to enter into 
this campaign, and which serves as a stumbling-block 
to many timorous but honest men. That fallacy is 
this : the effort is vigorously and persistentl)^ made 
by the Republican papers and orators to make it 
appear that this is another contest between the Re- 
publican and Democratic parties in the spirit and 
upon the principles of the past, and I say that it is 
a dishonest fallacy to attempt thus to hinge the cam- 
paign upon the old issues between the parties. For, 
my good Republican friend, this is not in any just or 
historic sense a contest between the Republican and 
Democratic parties at all, as we have known them in 
the past. If we look at the matter candidly and rea- 
sonably a moment we shall perceive that wc have 
here this year only the old names, but representing 



398 REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 

entirely new issues. Now, political parties spring up 
around living questions, they are called into exist- 
ence by public measures and policies where honest 
citizens divide in judgment upon issues which are 
presented for their consideration. You know that is 
the philosophy of political parties. Now, the Demo- 
cratic party came on to the stage long ago, in the 
days of our grandfathers ; was called into existence 
and baptized with its name on issues and questions 
long since passed into history. You know that this 
is so. The Republican party came upon the stage 
more than twenty years ago, before the war, and upon 
issues growing out of the question of slavery. It 
found the Democratic party still in existence, and for 
a series of years it took issue with that party upon 
pending political questions growing out of slavery 
extension and afterward the war and the policies of 
reconstruction. Of course I need not say that these 
questions are now as effectually disposed of as the 
old questions of banks and tariffs which divided the 
old Whig and Democratic parties. Slavery itself is 
dead, the war has long been over, and the work of 
reconstruction was finished years ago by all the 
proper statutes and constitutional amendments. The 
South is again back in the Union the same as before, 
the black man is free, and not only that, but has the 
ballot and holds public office everywhere in the South. 
The Democratic party and both its candidates this 
year have in the most solemn manner assured the 
country that with all this they are content, and that 
no single issue do they raise upon this final settle- 
ment of all these great questions. And besides this 
they could not raise any question, even if they 



REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 399 

desired, because everything is fully guaranteed by 
solemn constitutional amendments. You know that 
all this is also true. 

Now then, my friends, what do we find but this, that 
these names of the two parties are mere inheritances 
from our ])ast history, and arc now used for conven- 
ience to represent the party in power, and the oppo- 
sition party — these terms expressing the exact fact 
in regard to parties as they now appear before the 
country. My honest Republican friend, you who are 
afraid of the old name. Democrat, and hesitate to 
vote for Tilden this year simply on account of this, 
you must concede that when we look at the issues of 
this campaign, all the old ([uestions that made you 
and me Republicans in the past have disappeared 
and passed away. So it is not a contest between 
these parties on the principles which formerly divided 
them. 

We have seen that the principles and the leaders 
of the Republican party have completely changed, 
and now, if we look to the other party, we shall see 
a change almost equally as great. In the first place 
we shall see — for I can not stop to elaborate — that 
the party does not represent the old principles and 
issues any more than the other party does, for they 
have passed away. In the next place, there has been 
a great revolution in the material elements of the 
party itself, in the men that compose it and make up 
its numbers. Nearly half a full generation has passed 
since the old questions were in dispute, and half the 
men who comprised the Democratic party then are 
now in their graves. Their places are filled by new 
men, by young men who have since come to their 



400 REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 

majority and by the accession of thousands upon 
thousands of independent men and former Republi- 
cans. These elements essentially make another and 
a different organization of the party — they are the 
new wine, so to speak, with simply the old label. 
What does the young man who casts his first vote for 
Tilden this year know about the old questions before 
and during the war .^ What responsibility has he for 
the conduct of Vallandigham in the war? These 
matters are simply history to him. He has had noth- 
ing to do with them and has no responsibility for 
them. And certainly, my honest Republican friend, 
you can not find any fault with the past conduct and 
record of this large element of Liberal Republicans 
and Independents led by a long list of former Re- 
publican leaders, war governors, and statesmen, this 
year doing battle under the Democratic name. Now 
have I not made my point, that the two parties are 
not the same as they used to be, and do not stand 
for the same issues and principles as in the past .■* 

The question now recurs again, fellow citizens, 
which one of these parties shall we intrust with 
power? Which one will best meet the great need 
of the country for change and reform ? What do 
these two parties, respectively, stand for, as regards 
the present condition and needs of the country ? 
Those questions are all that the honest citizen ought 
to ask himself. No matter what either of them has 
done in the past. What will they do now for the 
country? — that is the question. 



REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 401 

CHANGE MOST CERTAIN THROUGH THE 
DEMOCRATIC PARTY. 

Fellow citizens, I can not mistake in saying that 
change is most certain through the Democratic or 
opposition party, h'or the proposition is a very plain 
one, and as sure as mathematics, that if you put this 
party in power you must necessarily drive the other 
party out of power. So the Democratic party, I say, 
necessarily stands for change, and the honest voter 
who wants this result can most surely and certainly 
aid to bring it about by casting his ballot for Tilden 
and Hendricks. This is the common sense and logic 
of the situation. 

BUT DOES THE REPUBLICAN PARTY STAND 
FOR CHANGE ? 

But is it equally true that we shall have a change 
if Hayes and Wheeler are elected ? I know that it 
is pretended by some that we shall. I say by some, 
for it is only a small portion, a section of the Repub- 
lican party, who now say that they even desire any 
change. 

Fellow citizens, I think I can demonstrate to every 
candid mind, in a few words, that this pretense is 
without any substantial foundation. W^hat do we 
mean when we talk about a change in the govern- 
ment and in our politics .'' I suppose we mean some- 
thing more than a mere change of one man for 
another, of one officer for another. If that is all 
that is meant by change and reform, I shall have to 
concede, of course, that Hayes is not (rrant — that 
the personal identity is not the same. A good many 
26 



402 REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 

weak but well-meaning men this year seem to be sat- 
isfied to find out that General Grant is not running 
again. That seems to be all the change they desire. 

But men of any sense or penetration will look be- 
hind and beyond this mere change of candidates, and 
ask whether there is any promise of a change of 
character, of conduct, of policy. It is altogether too 
cheap a way to dispose of this great question to let 
it turn upon the mere fact that another man than 
Grant is nominated. Who expected when the Cin- 
cinnati Convention met that Grant would be nomi- 
nated .'' The broad question is, Shall we have in Hayes 
a different administration from General Grant's, — dif- 
ferent in spirit, in purpose, in conduct ; different in 
the character and counsels of the leading men and in 
all the public political influences which surround it ? 
That is the great question, and that is what sensible 
people mean when they talk about a change. 

I know the pretense is made that we shall have 
such a change with the election of Hayes. But it is 
a pretense without anything real or tangible to sup- 
port it. All the known facts disprove it. 

In the first place, there is nothing in the circum- 
stances and manner of the nomination of Hayes to 
give any countenance to this pretense. Hayes was 
nominated simply as a compromise candidate be- 
tween the Republican factions led by Morton and 
Conkling and Cameron in the desperate struggle 
with the larger faction led by Blaine. Neither of 
these factions or these names represented any idea 
or any spirit or purpose of reform whatever. Nobody 
can pretend that they did. These men — Morton, 
Conkling, and Cameron — represent in the highest 



REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 403 

perfection what Mr. George William Curtis calls 
••machine politics." They were the men who in 
the Senate have helped so largely to give its bad 
character to the present administration, — the friends 
and counselors of Grant. Blaine, who was sup- 
ported by the larger faction, and who came so near 
being nominated, can hardly be claimed by his best 
friends, I think, as much of a reformer. Certainly 
nothing appeared in the investigations last spring to 
give him that character. Well, now, these factions 
fiercel)' struggled in the convention, and when the 
decisive moment came, to the surprise of everybody, 
out came Hayes as the successful candidate. That 
was the way he was nominated — a mere compro- 
mise agreed upon at the last moment by the machine 
factions which opposed Blaine with his machine. 
Was Hayes nominated as a reform candidate .-* I 
thought Bristow, Avith his one vote in six, was the 
reform candidate. W'as this a convention of Repub- 
lican reformers, bent upon making a great and rad- 
ical change in the Republican party .'* A few simple 
men in the country think it was. But Zach. Chandler 
evidently has got no such idea of it. 

Now, fellow citizens, you know the old saying, "A 
stream can not rise higher than its source." Here in 
this Cincinnati Convention of wrangling politicians 
of the old order in the Republican party, with candi- 
dates who are the very leaders of the present cor- 
rupt administration, is the fountain from which all 
these sweet waters of reform under Hayes are to 
flow, according to some very sanguine and very 
credulous men in the Republican party. " Do men 
gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles.'" 



404 REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 

THE PLATFORM — HAYES'S LETTER. 

But let US look a little further into this pretense of 
reform in the Republican party. The convention 
that nominated Hayes adopted a platform of what 
they called principles, and in that platform they 
unqualifiedly and unanimously indorsed Grant and 
his administration in terms of highest eulogy. There 
can be no doubt about that. This platform they sent 
to Governor Hayes, and he proceeded immediately 
to indorse the platform as it had indorsed Grant, 
saying that he unqualifiedly approved of everything 
in it. Now this was pretty strong, but this is not all. 
General Grant himself telegraphs Hayes, heartily 
indorsing his nomination. So here we have the plat- 
form indorsing Grant, Hayes indorsing the platform, 
and Grant indorsing Hayes ! 

Now if this were commercial paper, I should say it 
was pretty well backed, and ought to be good if the 
names were responsible ones. What, indeed, in a 
political or party sense, could be stronger than this .' 
And can there be any question that it does commit 
the party and the candidate to an unqualified indorse- 
ment of the present administration ? Certainly it 
does, if there is any force or value in the deliberate, 
written words of the platform, of Governor Hayes 
and General Grant. 

THE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM DOESN'T EVEN 
PROMISE REFORM. 

Now, fellow citizens, this is already shown to be 
a pretty bald pretense — this pretense of "reform 
inside the party ; " but I am not yet done with it. 
I will show you now, as the conclusion of the whole 



REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 406 

matter, that after all the noise that is made about 
" reform " and " change " in the Republican party this 
year, that it is all a falsehood, a humbug, and a delu- 
sion, and that the party, as a party, does not even 
promise any reform or change whatever. Now some 
of you may be a little startled by this assertion, after 
all that we have heard, and may require me to give 
you the proof Well, I can do that in a moment. 
You know we always look to the platforms of parties 
to see what they propose to do, to find out what they 
promise the people. Of course, you know that they 
frequently promise a vast deal more than they per- 
form. But they never, as a rule, do any more good 
than they promise to do. Now here is the great 
point I make. I say that the Republican party this 
year has not even promised any change or reform 
whatever. 

Reform ? What does the term imply ? Clearly 
there is implied in it the idea of something wrong to 
be reformed, is there not ? Do you reform a thing 
that is already right ? If a man has reformed, it is 
implied that he has been doing something wrong, 
and if there is any change in him for the better, in a 
moral sense, it shows that he has been doing some- 
thing which needed a change. Did you ever hear 
of a reformed drunkard who never drank anything .' 

Well, now, my Republican friend, you who talk 
loudl}' about the great reform which we are to have 
under Hayes, will you please stand up and point out 
to me the line or syllable in any Republican platform 
this year, national or State, which says, or even 
squints at saying, that the Republican party ever did 
anything wrong. -• I wait for you to speak. 



406 REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 

No, fellow citizens, no such word can be found in 
their platforms. On the contrary, they use the lan- 
guage of boasting ; they point with pride to their 
whole past conduct and make no recent exceptions 
whatever ; and some of them say the party will " do 
in the future as in the past." Where, then, is the 
promise of reform in that which is already right, 
where is the promise of any change in that which is 
already perfect and does not need changing .!* You 
know the prodigal son, returning from his husks and 
his wanderings, cried out, " Father, I have sinned 
against Heaven and in thy sight, and am no more 
worthy to be called thy son : make me as one of thy 
hired servants." But does this great Republican 
party, returning from its wanderings and its corrup- 
tions, come back to the American people, the source 
of all political power, and say, " W^e have sinned 
against Heaven and the American name, in the sight 
of all the world, and have brought dishonor upon the 
country and the flag in this great Centennial year ; 
we have basely betrayed the great trust put into our 
hands, but if we can be forgiven, we will do better in 
the future than we have in the past " ? No ! No ! 
Not so. But they come back boasting and bragging 
and demanding that the people shall reward them 
for what they have done. 

A MERE CONTINUATION OF GRANTISM. 

Have I not shown, then, fellow citizens, that there 
is nothing in this pretense of reform inside the 
Republican party, as it is called .-' and is it not plain 
that the election of Hayes, as has been so often said, 
will be the continuation of Grantism, as it is called ? 



REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 407 

Nowhere has the party, as a party, repudiated Grant 
and his administration. They dare not do it. As 
the canvass has gone on, less and less has been said 
by their presses and orators against the administra- 
tion, and to-day the whole energies of ('eneral Grant 
and his entire administration are being bent to 
secure the election of Hayes. Is this not so ? Who 
does not know that all the disreputable politicians in 
the party, all the leaders of bad eminence, all the dis- 
graced officials, are doing their best for the success of 
the ticket .' The identity between Hayes and Grant, 
between Republicanism and Grantism, grows closer 
and closer every day. 

WHAT GRANTISM IS. 

Fellow citizens, what is Grantism — this new word 
in our politics.' — It is a word of baleful import — a 
word of shame, a word of national humiliation. It 
is a word which means that under this administration 
every department of our government has been dis- 
graced and dishonored. Do I speak too strongly ? 
Look at the record — the plain but damning record 
which all men know. I said disgraced in every de- 
partment. Was I not right .'' What one has escaped .'' 
The state department, the great foreign department 
of the government, has been disgraced under this 
administration by the displacement of Charles Sum- 
ner and the elevation of Simon Cameron ; by the 
appointment and retention of public swindlers as the 
representatives of our country at foreign courts ; by 
wasteful and criminal extravagance, in robbing the 
treasury for the benefit of the camp followers of the 
party. The treasury, that great department organized 



408 REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 

by the genius of Alexander Hamilton, and once pre- 
sided over by statesmen like Albert Gallatan, and that 
great son of Ohio, in the war times, Salmon P. Chase, 
has been dishonored and disgraced by Boutwell and 
Richardson. The navy, first organized by 'that pure 
patriot, George Cabot, under Washington, and in 
more recent times adorned, under the administra- 
tion of Polk, by the eminent and cultured historian, 
Bancroft ; the navy, which carries the flag to every 
sea, and which has thundered for American liberty in 
all our wars, — this great department, under Grant, has 
been intrusted to the dishonest hands of a man who 
is thought by a great majority of his fellow citizens, 
upon good evidence, to be no better than a public 
robber ! And the war department — what shall I say 
of that ? The great department which, with the 
navy, and more than the navy, holds the honor and 
safety of the country in its hands ; the department 
organized by Henry Knox, of revolutionary fame, 
and since filled by Marshall, and Monroe, and Cass, 
and Marcy, and Stanton, — this great department has 
at last come to be held by a man mean enough and 
base enough to reach out his hand from his luxurious 
palace in Washington and rob the poor common sol- 
diers on our bleak Western frontiers at their mess 
tables ; rob them of their rations, the poor privates 
whose protection and comfort ought to have been 
dear to him ! What more ? There is the postmas- 
ter-generalship with Creswell and his frauds ; and 
the interior department, with Delano and his public 
infamy ; and there is the attorney-generalship, that 
great law office of the government, given into the 
weak and base hands of a man like Williams, — "Ian- 



REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 4-09 

daulet Williams," as he is called, — the man who con- 
nived at fraud and rode about in a carriage stolen 
from the government. This was Grant's choice for a 
successor of Pinckney and Wirt and Evarts ! And 
more than this, he sent the name of this same Will- 
iams to the Senate to fill the exalted and spotless 
office of chief justice of the United States ! To that 
had it come at last under Grant — Williams as suc- 
cessor to John Jay and John Marshall and Salmon P. 
Chase ! 

Fellow citizens, what a record is this ! And I have 
only glanced at it. Time would fail me to begin to 
unfold the black and damning catalogue of public 
infamy under this administration. I have read the 
history of corrupt men and corrupt nations in the 
past. I have read in the brilliant pages of Macaulay 
of that corrupt and disgraceful period under the weak 
and base rule of the Stuarts ; of the time when the 
venal and corrui:)t ministers w'ho surrounded the 
council board of Charles II, coined by the initial 
letters of their infamous names a new word in the 
English language that stands as the great synonym 
of all corrupt political rings — cabal. I have read of 
that later period under Queen Anne when the illus- 
trious Marlborough, the great soldier who made 
English arms invincible and glorious, the hero o^ 
Blenheim and Malplaquet, tarnished all his glory 
and forever dishonored his proud name by venality 
and corruption as a civil ruler, a notable example of 
a great military chieftain falling when intrusted with 
civil power. Fellow citizens, have we had in our 
times no repetition of these examples .■' 

And during all this dreary and disgraceful chapter 



410 REFORM AND HONEST (;0\"ERNMENT. 

in our political history General Grant has steadily- 
stood by these recreant public officials, giving them 
his confidence and protection, while he has just as 
steadily frowned upon and turned out honest men. 
Hoar and Cox, at the beginning, and Bristow and Jew- 
ell in these later times — all these men had to leave his 
cabinet because they honestly tried to do their duty 
and reform abuses ; while he has clung, with all the 
stubbornness of his nature, to such men as Delano 
and Richardson and Belknap and Robeson. When- 
ever the honest wrath of the people has driven a 
base public servant from power because he himself 
was shamed into resignation, there Grant has been 
with his words of eulogy and his letters of confi- 
dence. You know that this has been so. They call 
it standing by his friends. Well, that is a good trait, 
if a man's friends are decent people and fit to stand 
by. But how comes it that Grant never has made 
the mistake to stand by an honest and fearless pub- 
lic officer in the discharge of his duty ? How comes 
it that when the people turn out men for dishonesty, 
Grant immediately rewards them .' 

This, fellow citizens, is Grantism. Do you want 
any more of it ? Do the American people want to 
continue and perpetuate this kind of rule.' If they 
do, they can now help to elect the candidates of 
Zach. Chandler, of Morton, of Cameron, of Robeson 
and Babcock and Belknap, — and the Lord knows 
how many more men of the same kind. 

•"can't trust the DEMOCRATIC PARTY." 

But when all this is said, and seen to be true ; when 
the terrible demoralization and disgrace of our poli- 



KKIORM AM) HONEST GOVERNMENT. 411 

tics is pressed home upon the people, and they are 
urged to rise in their majest)' and hurl such a party 
from power, we are met by the cry, " Oh, this won't 
do. The country is not prepared for this. It is n't 
safe to turn over the government into the hands of 
the Democratic party and the rebels." How long 
do you think it will be safe to leave it in such hands 
as now control it ? Is n't safe to trust the Demo- 
cratic party, you say .-' Is n't safe to trust the party 
which nominates Charles Francis Adams ? But it is 
safe, I suppose, to trust the party which nominates 
Ben Butler ! That is what you say, is it ? Well 
now, I have told you the materials of the present 
Democratic party and the solemn pledges it is under 
to change and reform the government and to abide 
by all the results of the war. Can you deny all this.'' 
Can you point me to a single plank in the platform, 
to a single expression of the candidates, to a solitary 
line in any Democratic organ whatever, that pro- 
poses to disturb any settlement of the past or reopen 
any question of slavery, war, or reconstruction ? You 
know you can not do this. Then why do you con- 
tinually talk about its being unsafe to trust the 
Democratic party ? Have you any reason whatever 
to suppose that the Democratic party wants to go 
back to these questions ? Have you any reason 
whatever to believe that it does not speak truly and 
honestly when it says, and when its candidates this 
year say, that the constitutional amendments are 
final, and must not be disturbed ? You can't im- 
peach, by wholesale, in this way, the integrity of a 
whole party, composed of men equally honest with 
yourselves. The Democratic party not only have no 



412 REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 

desire to disturb these questions, but they have 
every motive of policy and selfish party prudence, 
even, to prevent their doing this. Why should they 
imperil, — yea, absolutely throw away, — every chance 
for power by going back to issues on which they 
were continually defeated, and where they would 
most certainly be defeated again ? All this talk, 
fellow citizens, is sheer nonsense. There is no dan- 
ger whatever in this direction, and these men, these 
Republican leaders, know it, but they use the argu- 
ment to rouse party prejudice, and frighten weak 
Republicans, and keep them in the ranks. 

can't TRUST THE SOUTH. 

But the South, the South — "We can't give the 
country over into the hands of the men who tried to 
destroy it." Well, who wants you to .-' The country 
is going to stay in its own hands, I suppose, and the 
South is only a portion of the country, a minority 
portion. 

WORSE THAN A FALLACY — A CRIME. 

But, fellow citizens, this persistent cry is as base- 
less as the other. There is no question of the South 
in this election at all, and it is another monstrous 
Republican fallacy to try to make this campaign turn 
upon such an issue as that. It is not only a great 
fallacy, but it is a great public outrage and crime at 
such a time as this. 

Fellow citizens, it is seldom, indeed, in the history 
of parties that so outrageous and so monstrous a 
thing has been done as this deliberate attempt of the 
Republican party this year to arouse all the passions 



REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 413 

and fierce animosities of a great civil war which has 
been ended for eleven years, and all for the selfish 
and base purpose of making party capital and keep- 
ing dishonest men in power. It is utterly without 
excuse in any recent conduct of the South. No 
spirit prevails there which is not peaceful and friendly. 
Even a year ago — and everybody conceded and 
admitted that the era of peace and reconciliation 
had come — the South was ready to clasp hands 
with the North, and join with us in the great observ- 
ances and memories of the Centennial year ; and 
you remember how the soldiers of the dead Confed- 
eracy last year marched round the base of Hunker 
Hill Monument and partook of the generous and 
boundless hospitality of antislavery Massachusetts, 
while the whole country looked gladly and approv- 
ingly on. The Republican party itself had long 
before declared for general amn^esty, in its National 
Convention, and had voted for amnesty in Congress, 
even with all its Butlers and its Hlaines. The South, 
after its wanderings and its rebellion, was back in 
the Union with all its rights under the government, — 
brought back under Republican rule, — and the memo- 
ries of the great war were fast receding into history, 
as a new generation of men were coming upon the 
stage. Why, who would have dared to predict a 
year ago that the Republican party this year would 
take up the war cry, and undertake to carry this 
election with it .■" It would have been scouted as 
preposterous, such was the peaceful sentiment at 
that time. 

But the Republican managers, when they came to 
this campaign, saw that their case was hopeless on 



414 REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 

the corrupt recent record of their party ; that the 
reason and the argument was all against them, and 
so they took up the war cry which had served their 
purpose in the past. 

I said it was a great crime, and so it is, thus to 
break the peace of this centennial year, and under- 
take to array the North and South against each other 
again. It is a crime which springs out of some of 
the basest human passions — out of hatred, out of 
malice, out of revenge. Can this be statesmanship ? 
Can this be brotherhood ? Can this be the spirit of 
a Christian people .'' True statesmanship would re- 
quire that everything be done to keep and cement 
the peace between the sections, so that there be no 
alienation among the people of the South, no spirit 
of a conquered province, and so all her waste places 
could be built up, and all her material resources be 
developed. The higher ethical principles, the nobler 
sentiments of humanity and brotherhood, and espe- 
cially the divine inculcations of Christianity, all re- 
quire forgiveness, the helping hand, and the sympa- 
thizing heart. It is a case where good, sound public 
policy is re-enforced by all the great sentiments 
which lift up and adorn humanity. 

A BASE APPEAL TO THE WAR SPIRIT. 

And yet the Republican party can see in all this 
only an opportunity to make party capital, and keep 
base men in power by insulting a conquered foe, — a 
foe now no longer, but a brother who asks only to 
live in peace with us. Do you deny this, and 
say that he is still our foe, our enemy ? Where is 
your proof? Do you point to the spirit of the South- 



REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 415 

ern people ? Ask your neighbor who has traveled in 
the South. Ask the thousands of Northern men who 
have lately experienced Southern hospitality and 
kindness if the Southern people are the enemies of 
the North. They all will tell you that the charge is 
false. Do you point to the Southern press ? Show 
me, if you can, from any recognized organ of South- 
ern opinion, a single threat against the government, 
a single revengeful expression against the people of 
the North. Ah ! you point to rebels in Congress, 
and say there is the proof. I deny it, and I appeal 
to the record. Show me, if you can, a single dis- 
loyal utterance, a single threat against the flag, or 
the Constitution, or the government, or the Union 
from any Southern member of this Congress. O, 
you say, " Ben. Hill, Ben. Hill — he talked treason." 
Tell me what Ben. Hill said by way of threat against 
the government, if you can. Did he say that the 
South were going to rebel again ? Did he say that 
they were going to get control of the government 
and reinstate slavery and pay the rebel debt ? Did 
he say that they were going to break up the Union 
of the States ? Now, my Republican friends, after all 
the noise you have made over Ben. Hill and his rebel 
speech, must I tell you that he, even he, said no such 
things at all, but did say just the contrary .'' That 
the South had made a great mistake in going into 
rebellion, and that they never would do it again, 
that they would be loyal to the flag and the Consti- 
tution ; that they were back in the Union, their 
father's house, and there they intended to stay ; and 
that they would never get up another rebellion. 
That is what Ben. Hill said. I know that is not 



416 REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 

what you have made a good many people at the 
North believe he said, but nevertheless the fact 
remains. His words are on record. He said some 
intemperate things, when goaded by Blaine, about 
the conduct of the war, about the past ; but so far as 
the future is concerned, his speech was loyal. 

THE REBEL CONGRESS — THE CRY ABOUT 
TURNING OUT UNION SOLDIERS. 

Fellow citizens, it is perfectly amazing how far 
misrepresentation has been carried by Republicans 
upon this whole question. How much has been said 
about this rebel Congress ! And yet not one rebel or 
disloyal utterance to put your finger on during the 
whole session ! And on the other hand, a thousand 
loyal utterances, a thousand protestations of a desire 
to live in peace under the Union, and obey the laws 
and be brothers again with us of the North. Look 
at what the eloquent Lamar has said over and over 
again, speaking for the South. Why, fellow citizens, 
we should not have had our great Centennial Exhi- 
bition if it had not been for Lamar's speech and 
Robbins's speech, and the votes of these Southern 
rebels in Congress. And yet Republican newspapers 
and stump-speakers talk as though these men were 
public enemies, in a state of war, who had somehow 
got into our Congress and compelled us to take and 
count their votes ! " But they were brigadier-gen- 
erals in the rebel army." Well, what of this .'' Does 
anybody dispute that the great body of the Southern 
people were against us in the war, and is it not as 
natural now that they should elect their brigadier- 
generals as that we should ours ? 



REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 417 

" But see how they turned out the poor crippled 
Union soldiers in the House and put rebel soldiers 
in their place." Here again, I perceive, you don't 
know what you are talking about. In the first place, 
no Union soldiers were turned out, nobody was 
turned out. Nobody was in to be turned out, for 
the old officers all went out with the old Congress. 
What you simply mean to say, then, is that the 
new House did not appoint the officers of the old 
House. And why should they ? Has it been the 
custom in our politics for the past thirty or forty 
years for one party, on coming into power, to reap- 
point all the office-holders of the other party .-* Has 
the Republican party acted on that magnanimous 
and romantic idea ? Why, what nonsense is this ! 

But, in the next place, the official record shows 
that the present House has appointed more Union 
soldiers than the former House ! But, you say, they 
have also appointed ex-rebel soldiers. So they have, 
twenty-eight of them as against fifty-six Union sol- 
diers, certainly not an unfair proportion, in a sec 
tional sense. What is there terrible about this .' 
Are not these ex-rebel soldiers in the Union, and 
entitled to hold office .' And is it any worse for 
them to hold office than for rebel officers to sit in 
Congress .'' But you have recognized that right. 
Look at the cjuestion fairly. Do you say that the 
men of the South should be excluded from office 
under the government .'' Do you want to take such 
a position as that ? W-hat kind of fairness would 
that be, and what becomes of the amnesty that the 
Republican party itself has granted and voted ! 
Amnesty means political forgiveness, and the full 



418 REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 

restoration to political rights and privileges, if it 
means anything but a fraud and a cheat. The pres- 
ent House simply recognized the rights of all sections 
and of all races, too, for it appointed quite a number 
of negroes to those offices. The official record, I 
say, shows all this, and it does not depend upon 
my word. 

grant's rebel APPOINTMENTS — republican 

INCONSISTENCY AND DISHONESTY 

EXPOSED. 

But I think I can give our Republican friends all 
they will want of this kind of argument in a few 
moments. You cry out, do you, about the appoint- 
ment of rebels to office ? Have you forgotten, then, 
how before Grant, a Republican president, had been 
in power two months he appointed one of the lead- 
ing rebel generals to a responsible office under the 
government .'' Yes, when this Republican president 
— your president — wanted to appoint a collector for 
the port of New Orleans, a fifteen thousand dollar 
office, to collect our revenues, he forgot all about our 
crippled soldiers and Southern loyalists and North- 
ern patriots, and took General Longstreet, the rebel 
general who commanded on that bloody line in East 
Tennessee, which our brave soldiers remember so 
well. Now what have you got to say about that ? 
Did you not cry out against it at the time ? And, 
remember, that was more than seven years ago. 
But that isn't all. Pretty soon after General Grant 
needed an attorney-general, and here again he over- 
looked all the Northern soldiers and the Southern 
loyalists, and all the able lawyers of the North, and 



REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 419 

went down to the rebel State of Georgia and took a 
cheap lawyer by the name of Ackerman. who had 
worn the rebel shoulder straps in the war — took him 
and put him into that great and responsible law 
office, where he could give a loyal administration 
counsel about the sacredness of the laws and the 
Constitution ! What have you got to say now about 
" crippled soldiers " ? But I am not done yet. Grant 
wanted to send a minister plenipotentiary to the court 
of the Russian czar, who had been our friend in the 
war, and here again, passing over all the loyal sol- 
diers and Unionists, he picked out the arch rebel, 
James L. Orr. of South Carolina, a man whom I heard 
myself twenty years ago in the House of Represen- 
tatives making treasonable and fire-eating speeches, 
stirring up the great war which afterward followed 
through the teachings of men like him. What have 
you got to say now about crippled soldiers ? But I 
am not done yet. I will give you another instance 
that will, perhaps, set even closer. When the Re- 
publican party assembled in national convention to 
renominate General Grant, in 1872, that great body, 
overlooking the many Union soldiers in its seats, 
elected for its president a rebel judge from North 
Carolina, a man by the name of Settle, and they set- 
tled him in the chair, although he had never done 
anything to deserve the distinction, except to be a 
rebel, that I ever heard of. And that same loyal con- 
vention called the rebel Orr, before mentioned, to the 
platform, and cheered him until they were hoarse. 

Now, I ask you again, what have you got to say 
about crippled soldiers, and Union soldiers, and the 
appointment of rebels to office .' How do you like 



420 REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 

the comparison of a few humble rebel common sol- 
diers, appointed to these petty, subordinate offices 
in the House, to copy papers, run about, and do 
chores, and wait on the members with those high 
officers of state, cabinet ministers, and foreign minis- 
ters, appointed by a Republican president, approved 
by a Republican Senate, with unanimous concurrence 
of the whole party, and that years ago ? And I could 
give you Mosby, the rebel guerrilla, who shot down 
our men from the bushes, as that hyperbolical Re- 
publican orator, Ingersoll, puts it, and scores of like 
instances. Ah, fellow citizens, this is a wretched 
campaign when such inconsistent and damnable stuff 
is put forward to carry an election. And yet great 
strapping, sweltering demagogues go up and down 
the country and talk about the poor, crippled Union 
soldiers that this terrible rebel House have turned 
out of office, and the rebel soldiers that have been 
put in their places ! 

THE " BOYS IN BLUE." 

Kindred to this in effrontry, and worse than this in 
its malign influence upon the country, is the persistent 
attempt of the Republican managers to array the sol- 
diers of the Northern army against the South again, 
as in the war, under the false and lying pretense that 
the South is still hostile to the Union, and that a 
Democratic triumph will result in a Southern ascend- 
ency in the government. And so we hear the war 
bugle again, and the " Boys in Blue " are marshaled 
by stall-fed patriots and home-made generals, in high 
sounding orders, to meet " the old enemy in front." 
We have in these orders and preparations all the 



rp:form and honest government. 421 

paraphernalia of military command ; all the pomp 
and circumstance of war. General Order "No." 1 ; 
adjutant-generals, quartermaster-generals, paymaster, 
generals, commissaries, drum-majors, with aids-de- 
camp, and all with a flourish of majesty that the 
tycoon himself might envy. 

Why, I saw the other day that there was a " De- 
partment of Michigan," and I presume the whole 
North is being organized into "departments." I 
noticed, however, that the "department" under 
whose guns and military law I reside was not 
commanded by the brave General Weitzel, who 
first led our troops into Richmond, though I fre- 
quently meet him on the streets of Detroit, where 
he lives ; nor by Michigan's most distinguished sol- 
dier, the gallant General Williams, who led an army 
corps under Sherman to the sea ; but by " Major- 
General Trowbridge," the collector of internal reve- 
nue for the district of Detroit. General Weitzel is 
the actual commander of the " Department of the 
Lakes," I believe, and General Williams is the Demo- 
cratic member of Congress from my city, but you 
will perceive that "General Trowbridge" outranks 
them. These brave and accomplished soldiers, the 
heroes of Richmond and Atlanta, of Cedar Mountain 
and Antietam, are now under the command of this 
hero of the internal revenue, who with steady perse- 
verance and unfailing regularity courageously draws 
his salary from the federal treasury ! 



422 REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 

A BASE APPEAL — PEACE BETWEEN NORTH 
AND SOUTH. 

But, seriously, fellow citizens, how base a thing it 
is thus to stir up the war spirit in a time of profound 
peace, and thus to attempt to set the citizen soldiers 
of a great country, who are and ought to be brothers, 
against each other. Why, turn this thing round and 
think what would be said if the Democratic party at 
the South were organizing the " Boys in Gray," and 
calling on the Confederate soldiers to rally to meet 
the "old enemy in front," and vote for Tilden to put 
down the North ! How long would this election be 
doubtful in that event.-* And yet this is just what is 
being done by the Republican party at the North. 
Fellow citizens, it is a puerile and gratuitous insult to 
the brave men in both sections — to the whole body 
of intelligent and patriotic citizens in the country. 
Who does not know that most of the great Union 
generals and commanders in the war, like Hancock 
and Hooker, and Sigel and Mc Clellan, and many 
more, with hosts of brave volunteer officers and pri- 
vates, all over the country, are acting to-day with 
the Democratic party, and will vote for Tilden as 
cheerfully and conscientiously as they fought for the 
Union .-" How puerile and contemptible, then, the 
assumption that every Union soldier is for Hayes! 

Ah, fellow citizens ! instead of being arrayed 
against each other, the soldiers of the North and the 
South should be brought together, face to face, in 
brotherly sympathy and union. Our great war, 
instead of being made a fountain of angry recollec- 
tions, should be a sacred, a holy, a chastening mem- 



REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 423 

ory for the people of both sections. Eleven years 
have the gentle rains and the blessed sunshine fallen 
upon the graves of the two great opposing hosts ; 
for eleven years has the guilty and erring South 
expiated in the midst of her desolated fields and 
ruined industries, and under rapacious and vandal 
carpetbag rule, the great wrong which she did to 
us and to the Union. She sowed the wind, and truly 
she has reaped the whirlwind. She took the sword, 
and she perished by the sword. But now she cries 
out for peace and for brotherhood with the North. 
Shall she not have it ? v\ll the dictates of true states- 
manship, all the pleading voices of old memories and 
of common kindred and race, all the blessed teach- 
ings of Christianit}", implore and beg for forgiveness, 
for lasting peace and concord between the North 
and the .South. All the talk about Southern su- 
premacy is a delusion and a chimera. The South is 
weak ; the North is strong. Thfe South is concjuered 
— the North is conqueror. Now that slavery is dead, 
there ought not to be any gulf or distinction between 
us ; there ought not to be any North or South in our 
politics ; but we ought to be one great homogenous 
people. 

THE TWO CANDIDATES COMPARED. 

I come now, fellow citizens, to what is really a 
great question in this campaign, the question as to 
which one of these candidates is best fitted and quali- 
fied by natural ability, by force of character and 
executive experience, to discharge the great duties 
of the presidency at such a time as this. Recollect 
we want reform in the government, reform in our 



424 REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 

civil service ; we want a thousand abuses corrected, 
a thousand bad practices weeded out of our political 
life. Everybody must admit that to do this we want 
a clear head and a strong, bold hand in the presi- 
dential chair. We want, fellow citizens, this year to 
elect a great centennial president, and to give him a 
work to do only second to the work which Washing- 
ton and Lincoln performed, — a work different from 
theirs, it is true, but one nearly as great in its 
importance. 

Now, which one of these men is best fitted for this 
great work ? Fellow citizens, I insult your intelli- 
gence by asking you the question. You know, all 
men must know, that in native ability and force of 
character, in power of brain, in strength and firmness 
of will, in all the qualities to make a great and strong 
man in the presidency, Samuel J. Tilden is incom- 
parably the superior of Rutherford B. Hayes. Now, 
in saying this, I mean no partisan or mean dispar- 
agement of your own amiable and estimable citizen 
and governor. I am willing, for the sake of the 
argument, to admit all the good qualities which are 
claimed for him. But not even the wildest extrava- 
gance of his own partisans and personal friends has 
ever dared to claim that he was a great man, or any- 
thing more than a capable and just citizen ; while 
not even partisan rage and bitterness have ever 
dared to question that Samuel J. Tilden was a very 
able and a very strong-willed man. 

- I confess to you, fellow citizens, that without any 
feeling of mere partisan admiration, I know not the 
man who has been presented for the presidency in 
this generation who has been the equal of Samuel J, 



REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 425 

Tilden in all those peculiar and special qualifications 
which are now needed in that great office. A great 
lawyer, he profoundly understands the Constitution 
and our political history and institutions ; a man of 
rare and even wonderful organizing and executive 
ability, he has demonstrated, both as a lawyer and 
governor of a vast commonwealth, the practical 
capacity for affairs which makes the great executive 
officer ; and in the rarer moral courage to enter upon 
the work of reform, and the indomitable persistence 
and power of will to follow it to the end against 
friend and foe alike, he has given notable and world- 
known examples. Is not such a man needed now at 
the head of our affairs? 

And will it be pretended for one moment that 
Hayes can do this great work as well as Tilden ? 
When and where has he ever demonstrated to his 
countrymen that he had the high qualities which 
they now need in the presidency ? Where are the 
public acts or the public speeches to show this ? 
When before, indeed, did a candidate ever come 
before the American people for this high and respon- 
sible office with so little behind him in the shape of 
a record ? And all the while the best thing that can 
be said for him is that he is an " amiable "' man. Fel- 
low citizens, we don't want an amiable man for presi- 
dent. We don't want a mild, good-natured man, 
with a yielding and pliable disposition, to be easily 
influenced by his intellectual superiors. We want a 
man of will, a man of nerve, a man of firmness, a 
man of iron. We want a great ruler, and leader of 
men, with God's commission as well as the people's 
commission to command ; a ruler like Napoleon, like 



42(5 REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 

Jackson, like Bismarck. And we should have him 
in Tilden. But should we in the mild and amiable 
Hayes.'' Is he the man to resist the corrupt influ- 
ences of his party at Washington ? Is he the man to 
tell Zach. Chandler, for instance, when that illus- 
trious example of civil service reform shall have 
secured his election and shall demand his reward, 
that he is no longer needed ; that such men as he 
have brought disgrace upon the party ; that here- 
after he shall depend upon Carl Schurz and George 
William Curtis for advice, and that Chandler and 
Cameron, and Morton and Conkling must stand back 
now.'* Do you believe he will say that .'' But if he 
does not, what better off will the country be than it 
is now ? Talk about civil service reform ? Don't 
Hayes know to-day that Chandler is engaged in 
doing the work of party, the meanest kind of party 
work, too, that was ever done in this country, — 
wringing assessments out of poor government clerks 
in violation of law, and organizing a campaign of 
political tricks and slander .'' Does n't Hayes know all 
this, and at the same time that Chandler is a mem- 
ber of the cabinet, a high officer of the government, 
which is to be kept, by his own plan, pure and 
uncontaminated by mere party politics ? And yet 
does this civil service reform candidate protest or 
disclaim ? Ah, fellow citizens, it is such things as 
this which show us the hollowness of Republican 
professions, and give us a foretaste of the kind of 
administration we should have under Hayes. 



REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 427 

A CAMPAIGN OF SLANDER. 

But I must not forget that next to the revival of 
the issues and animosities of the war, the Republican 
managers this year have relied upon a deliberately 
planned and thoroughly followed campaign of per- 
sonal slander and detraction of the Democratic can- 
didate. They began this early, immediately after 
his nomination, and they have pursued him with 
venomous, slanderous tongues and libelous pens ever 
since ; only weakening a little lately, as his com- 
plete defense against their chief accusation has met 
them like a square blow in the face. But they will 
rally again, presently, and then the barking and the 
baying will go on. 

Now, fellow citizens, I shall not go into the details 
of this business at all. I shall enter upon no defense 
of Tilden, upon no detraction or abuse of Hayes. It 
is a shame to our politics and to' our country that at 
last we have come to the time when our presidential 
campaigns must be marked by the outpourings of 
personal bitterness and slander. 

But I charge this deplorable state of things upon 
the Republican party. They first began in this 
year, as they did in 1872. Who can forget that 
campaign of four years ago, with its intolerance, its 
bitterness, its slander, and its caricatures ! 

Fellow citizens, on a beautiful afternoon last May, 
I stood on a gentle height in Greenwood Cemetery 
by the grave of Horace Greeley, with its plain mar- 
ble slab, waiting for a more fitting and pretentious 
monument ; and as I stood there, and looked across 
the waters of the bay to the great city where his life 



428 REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 

work was done, I thought of that noble and grand 
career ; I thought how the poor boy came from his 
humble home in the hills of Vermont, all alone, 
poorly clad, of awkward and uncouth appearance, 
without friends, without money — came to the great 
metropolis to seek his fortune ; and how by the 
noblest and best qualities which can adorn human- 
ity, — by integrity, by perseverance, by honor and 
manliness and ability, — he conquered that great city, 
conquered all its wealth and pride and culture and 
power, and came to be its most eminent citizen, a 
great editor and philanthropist, honored all over the 
world. And then I thought how in the ripeness and 
fullness of his life and honors he became a candidate 
for the presidency, and how then the great party 
which he had done so much to found and keep so 
long in power turned upon him with savage ferocity, 
and followed him with vindictive slander and libel, 
until, weary, worn, and broken, he sank into his 
grave, his great, kind heart literally broken by man's 
abuse and ingratitude. Ah. then I thought, too. for 
the honor of human nature, how the heart of the 
great stricken city — stricken with remorse — rose 
up at his funeral, and I saw again, in imagination, 
that magnificent funeral pageant, pouring its count- 
less thousands to do honor to the man of the people 
as they bore him and followed him to his last rest- 
ing-place at my feet. God be thanked that there 
was some remorse and contrition in the country for 
the great wrong that had been done to a man who, 
with whatever little weakness or inconsistencies of 
character he may have had, was amply entitled to 
rank as one of our great Americans. The conduct 



REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 429 

of the Republican party toward Horace Greeley in 
1872 will ever be a blot and burning disgrace upon 
that organization so long as it lives upon the earth. 

But now, as then, they resort to the same base and 
dishonorable policy of personal abuse and detraction. 
Vain that even their own organs, including the New 
York Times itself, have up to this year borne unfailing 
and abundant testimony to Governor Tilden's charac- 
ter, integrity, and ability, and have praised him in 
language of unstinted eulogy for his fearless public 
conduct in crushing out the Tammany ring and the 
canal ring in New York. Forgetting all this, I say, — 
or rather, turning their backs upon it, — they now fill 
the very air with slander and libel, calling him thief, 
perjurer, swindler, railroad wrecker, ballot-box stuffer, 
traitor, and copperhead ! Will this kind of thing 
avail.'' Can a man be thus hooted and howled 
down after sixty years of great and honorable life } 
Are the American people such Unreasoning savages 
and devils as that .-' 

No, no, it can not be that they are. It can not be 
that an election can be carried in that way. Already 
the reaction is setting in. Already it is seen that 
this campaign of slander is turning to plague its in- 
ventors. Governor Tilden is already completely vin- 
dicated from every charge that has been brought 
against him. I shall not speak of the charges against 
Governor Hayes. He has been treated with eminent 
fairness by his opponents, and he may thank only his 
friends for being now himself involved in charges 
affecting his personal honor. 



430 REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 

CONCLUSION. 

But, fellow citizens, I must close without saying a 
great many things that need to be said. What is the 
conclusion of the whole matter? — Clearly, it is this, 
the Republican party has outlived its usefulness ; it 
has grown corrupt in all its parts, and ought to be 
swept from power. It is no longer needed for the 
black man ; it is no longer needed for the white man ; 
it is no longer needed for the country. All parties 
grow corrupt that are too long intrusted with power. 
Years ago this was true, I think, of the Democratic 
party ; it is true now, I know, of the Republican 
party. 

We want a peaceful revolution in this country. In 
other countries, under other forms of government, 
when public wrongs and corruptions are piled moun- 
tain high, and the people can no longer bear them, 
they rise with arms in their hands, and throne and 
altar, false priest and despot king, go down in blood. 
But we have a great, peaceful remedy for all the 
wrongs of the State. I invoke you, fellow citizens, to 
use this great remedy. I pray you to rise in your 
might, and hurl this recreant and corrupt party from 
power and place. If it has not deserved this fate, 
when can a party, I ask, deserve to die .-' I believe 
the Republican party to-day is inimical to the pres- 
ent prosperity and future existence of the Republic. 
We have successfully met the great national dangers 
of slavery and the war, we have overthrown those 
great enemies of our peace ; but we have now to 
meet and grapple with this great enemy of corrup- 
tion — an enemy not so violent and bloody as the 



REFORM AND HONEST GOVERNMENT. 431 

others, but more sly and stealthy, and just as deadly 
as the others. Oh, we might better have died in the 
war, gone down in a sea of blood, had our national- 
ity and our liberty boldly overthrown by public ene- 
mies in open battle, than to perish now by this slower 
but sure and horrible leprosy of public corruption ! 

I appeal to you, men of Ohio, to you. old antislav- 
ery men of the Reserve. Standing here upon your 
soil, in this fair and beautiful city, I think of the 
great part you have in this contest ; 1 think how, 
next Tuesday, your verdict will so greatly help to 
settle this important election ; I pray you to join 
hands with your sister State of Indiana in a glorious 
and triumphant victory for the right. As I speak, 
the names of your great public men of the past, of 
the old antislavery leaders, come up before me. 1 see 
the bold and indomitable Joshua R. Giddings, with 
his white hair, like an oriflamme of battle against the 
great enemy, slavery. I see the milder but majestic 
mein of Salmon P. Chase, the great secretary and 
chief justice. I honored those great men in the 
days of my boyhood, and I am true still to their 
names, their principles, and their memories. I call 
upon you, antislavery men of Ohio and of this old 
antislavery Reserve, to fight against corruption as 
they taught us to fight against slavery. Nearly all 
the great antislavery leaders are with us now- 
Charles Sumner speaks to us from his grave, and 
Chase and Greeley, also, while the living voices of 
Adams and Cassius M. Clay, of Bryant and Julian, 
come ringing to our ears from other parts of this 
great political battlefield. 

Close up the ranks, and let the column move 



432 REFORM AND HONEST g6vERNMEN1 

grandly on to victory. All the auguries are aus- 
picious ; the heavens are full of blazing portents of 
coming, crushing overthrow of the base men who 
have betrayed the people. Right and justice shall 
triumph, the Republic shall be made clean and pure 
again, as in the days of the fathers, and go majes- 
tically onward in her great career among the nations. 



SPEECH AT BURNS BANQUET, 1881 



Toast No. 2: "The influence of Scolland's genius upon the world: 
All civilization is made debtor to it." Response by Hon. Chas. 
.S. May. 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlevien: 

I thank your committee for affording me the honor 
and the pleasure of bearing a part in this most inter- 
esting occasion. The descendants of Scotland here 
to-night meet around these tables, — not like that 
ancient captive people who sat down and wept by 
the rivers of Babylon, and could not sing the old 
song in a strange land, — but in the midst of plenty 
and content, and surrounded by friends who are like 
new-found brothers, you come, to keep a national 
festival, dear to all Scottish hearts. But, my friends, 
while this is a time for good cheer and glad enjoy- 
ment, for flashing wit and gushing song, I think I 
can see in it, too, an element that is deep and tender 
as any which can stir the soul of man. For memory 
is at work here to-night, and brooding above us is 
the spirit of the fatherland ; and to these older men 
and women here, especially, come thronging back 
the sacred recollections of childhood and the early 
home. Ah, what power is there in these .' More 
than three thousand miles of stormy ocean roll their 
wintry billows between you and that early home, 
but you look away from this scene with a thought, 
and brighter than these flashing lights those high- 



28 



433 



434 SPEECH AT BURNS BANQUET. 

lands and glens, those dear meadows, lakes, and 
streams, burst upon your vision, clothed in all the 
holy light of childhood and youth. Tears come to 
your eyes, and from your swelling hearts there rises 
to the lips the exclamation which you would not and 
you could not repress, — the exclamation born out 
of all filial and patriotic devotion — " God bless old 
Scotland ! " 

My friends, you have a right to love and to be 
proud of your native land. No people ever had a 
better. You have a right to be proud of her history, 
her genius, her achievements, and her influence. 
The sentiment of the toast to which I speak does 
not overstate the matter. Although a part of that 
great English-speaking empire, Scotland and Scotch- 
men the world over still preserve all the striking 
national peculiarities of a separate people. And you 
have a grand history, too, as a separate people. 
From that early time when the half-naked Picts and 
Scots opposed sturdy resistance to the Roman con- 
queror, all the way down to the union with Eng- 
land, and since then, to our day, the Scotchman has 
an individual national history to point to ; a history, 
it is true, like of other nations, checkered by some 
vicissitudes of fortune, — now bright with Stirling and 
Bannockburn, now dark with Falkirk and Flodden- 
field, — but in the main a history full of honor and 
full of glory. And from the background of this his- 
tory, from among a hundred grizzled warriors, and 
great worthies, and renowned knights of chivalry, 
there loom up to every Scotchman's thoughts, on an 
occasion like this, two majestic and imposing figures, 
— William Wallace and' Robert Bruce, the tradi- 



SPEECH AT BURNS BAN(^UET. 435 

tional, legendary heroes of Scotland How these 
names kindle the Scotch patriotism, and fire the 
Scotch blood like a battle-call ! 

William Wallace, hero and martyr, vindicator and 
protector of Scotland — he began that resistance to 
English domination which I'Ldward I had acquired 
through a weak or treacherous Scottish king, and 
which was afterward completely victorious at Ban- 
nockburn. The mock laurel with which his victors 
crowned him as he was led to execution has been 
made real and immortal in the legends, the poetry 
and the affections of fifteen generations of Scotch- 
men. 

Robert Bruce, hero and liberator, restored the in- 
dependence of his country and left his crown undis- 
puted to his son. Victor in Scotland's greatest 
struggle and most famous battle, a halo surrounds 
his name, and he lives forever ip the affections and 
the gratitude of his countrymen. 

I have alluded to the fact of Scotland's connection 
with England, but I do not forget that every Scotch- 
man can indulge the proud reflection that there is no 
humiliation in that union for him. Other nations and 
people have been conquered and dismembered, and 
made as spoils by the victors. Ireland, whose woes 
to-day fill the ears of Christendom, and whose his- 
tory has been so full of pathos and tragedy, was con- 
quered and subjugated by Henry and by Cromwell, 
and compelled to a hated union which has been the 
source of infinite discord and trouble. Poland was 
overrun and subjugated by three imperial robbers, 
and divided as plunder between them. Almost in 
our own day Hungary was crushed and dismembered 



436 SPEECH AT BURNS BANQUET. 

by the Austrian tyrant, and disappeared as a nation 
from the map of the world. But, sir, to-day, though 
Scotland is of England, she is not England's by con- 
quest. In the days of her separate nationality, she 
fought many stout battles with that sturdy and war- 
like English people, and history has recorded it to 
the immortal glory of her arms that at Bannockburn 
she inflicted the most terrible defeat ever suffered 
by the race whose undaunted and traditional courage 
won Blenheim and Waterloo. No, Scotland was not 
conquered by England, but England herself fell to 
your king's inheritance, after Elizabeth, with Shakes- 
peare and Bacon, and all its rich possession of glory ! 
What an inheritance was that for a king. Ah, well 
had it been for that king, and the descendants and 
successors of his line and house, of which my elo- 
quent friend here (Col. Irish) is to speak to-night, 
had he and they appreciated that great possession as 
they ought. But I will leave all this to the scholarly 
and finished periods of my friend. 

And since the day of that union, that absorption, 
as I might say, of the British crown in the reigning 
house of Scotland, the Scotch race has maintained 
equal share in the achievements and the renown of 
England, and through all the world has kept full high 
advanced the genius and the power of the Scotch 
name. 

In all the great departments of human exertion 
and skill, Scotchmen have ever been found in the 
front rank. How can I, in a few moments here 
to-night, worthily speak of that brilliant constella- 
tion of genius with which Scotland has helped to light 
up the intellectual heavens of the eighteenth and 



SPEECH AT liURNS I5AN(2UET. 437 

nineteenth centuries. I liav^e no time even to call 
the names in that long roll of great men. To 
poetry and song she has given Thomson, Heattie, 
Scott, Campbell, Pollock, Montgomery, Wilson, and 
last and greatest Robert Burns, whose anniversary we 
celebrate to-night, and whom Scotland holds ten- 
derly in her heart of hearts, as her national poet. I 
can not speak to you of that child of inspiration and 
the people. I must not trench upon the part of 
another, and I need not add to what has already 
been so well said. I know the love which you bear 
his name is akin to devotion. He is the poet of the 
people, of the common people, and he is enshrined 
in the hearts of the people of his native land as no 
other English-speaking poet has ever been. He has 
spoken to Scotland, too, as no other poet ever will or 
can speak to her. How like the sound of a martial 
trumpet his 

''Scots, wha hae \vi' Wallace bled"' 

thrills the Scottish heart. How tenderly the songs 
of love, and Mary, of the field and the furrow, appeal 
to the great heart of the common people. How like a 
sweet idyl of that common people, and like a blessed 
voice from the heavens, rests upon all Scotland, " The 
Cotter's Saturday Night." No wonder such a poet is 
loved ! How full of pathos is his life I The old sad 
story — neglected genius, a broken heart, a despair- 
ing death ! Shame on the world that it should be 
so. Shame on the world that in the bustle and 
clamor of its little great men, it should fail to recog- 
nize its heroes and its prophets — as in the gather- 
ing and the buzzing of the flies and insects about 
our heads, we fail to note the eagle in the sky. But 



438 SPEECH AT BURNS BANQUET. 

death is the great leveler and the great avenger, and 
death coming to him thus sadly and pathetically, 
before old age had touched or chilled him, disclosed 
to Scotland her greatest bard ; and now, in the lan- 
guage of our own illustrious poet, he will forever 

"Haunt his native land as an immortal youth." 

Tears and benedictions for the memory of Burns ! 

Among philosophers you have produced Adam 
Smith, who wrote that great work on "The Wealth 
of Nations" — a book of which a distinguished mod- 
ern writer has said that it has " contributed more 
toward the happiness of men than all that has been 
effected by the united abilities of all the statesmen 
and legislators of whom history has preserved an 
authentic account," — and Reid, and James, and 
Stewart, and Brown, and almost in our own day, that 
splendid specimen of a man, and that greatest phi- 
losopher since Aristotle, Sir Wm. Hamilton. To the 
great historians you have contributed Hume, who 
wrote that matchless history of England, the elegant 
Robertson, and Watson, Buchanan, Burnet, Russell, 
Mackintosh, Allison, and that rugged intellectual 
Titan and veteran who still lingers upon the stage 
which he has illumined by his genius — Thomas 
Carlyle. 

In men of science your list is a long and illustri- 
ous one, and one name on it alone would have been 
more than your share toward the inventions and 
discoveries of the world. Of course I refer to the 
celebrated James Watt, whose discovery of the 
power of steam has revolutionized labor and ad- 
vanced civilization beyond the power of calculation 



SPEECH AT BURNS BANQUET. 439 

or expression. His immortality is secure, his name 
will never die. The thundering engines that course 
the land and plow the rivers and seas, and bear the 
worlds commerce on their giant strength ; the re- 
volving wheels and shafts, and flashing spindles in all 
the vast labyrinth of the machinery that does the 
world's manufacturing — all these, like a mighty an- 
them and symphony of the industries, will sound out 
his name forever. But besides this great man, you 
have given to science and invention, Napier, Fergu- 
son, Gregory, Playfair, Maclaurin, Leslie, Sir David 
Brewster, Hugh Miller, Sir Charles Lyell, and Sir 
Robert Murchison, — truly an illustrious company. 

Among writers who have ministered to the world's 
instruction and delight, Scotland has contributed Bos- 
well, Smollett, Mackenzie, Blair, Jeffrey, and Sir Wal- 
ter Scott, whose wonderful historical novels have 
delighted and charmed the men and women of two 
hemispheres. To the great theologians and preach- 
ers she has given sturdy John Knox, the eloquent 
Chalmers, the brilliant but erratic Irving, and others 
of almost equal eminence. And among lawyers and 
statesmen I need only mention that silver-tongued 
commoner and world-famous judge who delivered 
the law of I'Veedom to England in the Somerset 
case, — the great Lord Mansfield, of whom my learned 
friend. Judge Hawes, is fitly to speak — that wonder- 
ful jury lawyer and advocate, whose power has never 
been equaled, and who is still the model in that field 
of eloquence, Erskine ; and later that bold, imperi- 
ous, learned, and many-sided statesman-lawyer and 
intellectual gladiator, whose long career has reached 
to the threshold of our own times, Lord Brougham. 



440 SPEECH AT BURNS BANQUET. 

There are others whose names I might mention, but 
surely these are enough to show what lawyers and 
statesmen Scotland has produced in the last hun- 
dred years. 

But, my friends, this long and splendid array at 
which I have only hurriedly glanced, these great and 
shining names, do not belong to Scotland alone. She 
can claim no exclusive property in them ; they be- 
long to the whole world, and are now an inseparable 
part of the life and growth and power of this won- 
derful civilization of our nineteenth century. Scot- 
land has given them to the world, and the world and 
all future time have been, in the language of the 
toast, made debtors to her for the priceless gift. 

Only a few words more, Mr. President, and I have 
done. I have said, sir, that you are surrounded by 
friends here to-night, and that you are no strangers 
in this land of your adoption. I may say further that 
you are welcome here, and that in this composite na- 
tionality of ours, made up of so many streams and 
contributions from so many nations and races, Scotch 
thrift, Scotch integrity, and Scotch intelligence are 
factors and elements that contribute greatly to our 
common wealth, prosperity, and character. I cer- 
tainly know of no people who are your superiors in 
these respects, and I think the statistics would show 
a very small percentage of Scotch criminals and pau- 
pers. I am sure that I speak the sentiment of every 
native American of the English stock when I say that 
all Scotchmen are welcome to America, that we fully 
appreciate the noble race from which they spring, 
and the grand names they have given to the world, 
and that there is ample room and opportunity in our 
great country for them all. 



SPEECH AT BURNS BANQUET. 441 

Yes, let them come, but let the parent stock remain 
as it is now in full vigor, a perennial source and 
fountain of sturdy patriotism, of saving common 
sense, and of intellectual inspiration. Let old Scot- 
land stand firm in her ancient, rugged, island seat, in 
the midst of the cold northern seas, with her noble 
history behind her, with its great struggles and tri- 
umphs for civil and religious liberty ; there let her 
remain forever, sending out her sturdy sons and her 
immortal influence to the ends of the earth. My 
friends, you find here new homes, and friends, and 
ampler opportunities, and you are good citizens ; but 
you have not forgotten the land of your birth, and 
to it your hearts go back to-night as to the loving 
mother who rocked the cradle of your childhood. 
God be thanked for these great sentiments which so 
uplift our common humanity, which elevate us above 
the cold calculations of this too selfish world, and 
ally us to all that is grand and good and sublime in hu- 
man nature, b^orgetting all meaner and baser things> 
you give yourselves to this patriotic festival, and to 
the holy memories of Scotland and Robert Burns. 
Thanking God for that gifted child of genius and 
song, you stretch forth your arms to-night across the 
wintry sea to the dear old land, you clasp her to your 
hearts again, and exclaim in the noble and passion- 
ate language of your own Walter Scott : — 

•' < ) Caledonia I slern and wild, 
Meet nurse for a poetic child I 
Land of brown heath and shaggy wood, 
Land of the mountain and the flood. 
Land of my sires I what mortal hand 
Can ere untie the filial band 
That knits me to thv rugged strand 1 " 



LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE 
LIQUOR TRAFFIC 



Mr. Chairman, Ladies a?id GentUinen : 

In looking around your great city to-day, and 
standing in the presence of this audience to-night, I 
am reminded of my first visit to Baltimore, when 
I marched with my regiment, with loaded guns, 
through your angry, tumultuous streets, in the excit- 
ing and memorable days of that springtime of 1861. 
I have passed over this great highway to the nation's 
capital many times in the peaceful days since, but I 
have not again walked your streets till after so many 
years I come once more, this time on a mission of 
peace, to join hands with you against another great 
danger to the republic. 

I can not tell you how much I regret that I come 
from a lost battlefield in our great cause — and these 
gentlemen here on this platform know that I begged 
to be relieved from my engagement ; but I feel now, 
after all, that I can repeat the words and the senti- 
ment of that famous message which a gallant king of 
France sent to his mother from a lost battlefield : 
"All is lost, save honor." Thank God, we saved our 
honor in Michigan. We made a most gallant strug- 



' Speech delivered before the Maryland .State Temperance Alliance, 
at Oratorio Hall, Baltimore, April 26, 1887, and repeated in substance, 
at Chickering Hall, New \'ork City, May i, following. 
442 



LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LI(;)UOR TRAFFIC. 4-i3 

gle against the enemy, — this time, and the first time 
in the history of such contests, out in full force, — 
and our standard of Prohibition went down before a 
subsidized press, before unfriendly and treacherous 
politicians, before respectable and cowardly business 
men, with their false issue of high license, and, at 
the last, before manifest and stupendous frauds on 
election day. Hut the seed which was sown in that 
contest will bear fruit a hundredfold, and you will 
hear from Michigan again. 

It often happens in the history of such struggles, 
as in the conflicts of arms, that the first battles are 
lost. Bunker Hill was a military victory for Great 
Britain, but a moral victory for the colonies ; and 
the confidence which it inspired was never lost 
throughout the whole struggle of the Revolution. 
Bull Run was a great defeat, and an unspeakable 
humiliation to the cause of the Union ; but when the 
pride as well as the patriotism of the North was 
aroused by it, the Confederacy was a lost cause 
from that hour. So may we improve the lesson oi 
Michigan. 

You are here, I am told, upon the eve of battle 
with the liquor traffic, and you are moving and ask- 
ing that the question of a constitutional amendment 
be submitted by your legislature. You have local 
option carried in a majority of your counties, as I 
see by the displayed table in the rear of this plat- 
form. So far, so good. But you want a broad, gen- 
eral rule, which shall include your whole State, and 
be a standard of direction to legislators and people 
alike. Now, our great republican system never 
looks so well, or appears so grand, as when the peo- 



444 I.EGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 

pie, in their primary capacity, are permitted to vote 
for their constitutions, and to put great principles of 
government into their organic law. It is a higher 
and more impressive function than the passage of a 
fluctuating statute, or the voting for mere men. 

My friends, the growth of Prohibition sentiment in 
the South has been rapid and wonderful, as we have 
all seen. Maryland was a part of the Old South, and 
should follow the New in this great movement. If 
the South was the citadel of slavery, it may turn out 
to be that the North will be that of the liquor traffic, 
and thus history will be balanced. This I know, 
that we can build a true and great republic only on 
the ruins of both. 

OUR NATIONAL DANGER — THE GREAT ENEMY. 

For we have an enemy to-day worse than slavery, 
bad and terrible as that was ; for that in a sense was 
far away, a cloud that hung, black and threatening, 
over our Southern sky, and finally burst into the 
lightning and thunder of our great Civil war, finding 
its speedy death in that vast and bloody tragedy. 
But this one, this enemy, is at our very doors, in our 
very midst ; it threatens us more nearly, it touches 
us more closely ; the cloud darkens our hearthstones ; 
we are enveloped in its very folds. Slavery was 
local, was geographical and sectional ; was an insti- 
tution peculiar to a part of the States and people 
only, and could be dealt with as such. The sharp, 
heroic surgery of the war cut off the diseased limb, 
and left the body alive and with new vigor and 
power. Hut our enemy of to-day is like a disease of 
the blood which carries poison into all our circula- 



LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 44o 

tion, moral, intellectual, and economic. The whole 
head is sick, the whole heart is faint. 

My friends, this enemy, like the vast, poisonous in- 
fluence which it is, is for the most part invisible to the 
naked, physical eye. Only, perhaps, in the two hun- 
dred thousand rumsellers. and their countless victims 
in this land, can we see its outward, physical mani- 
festation. But we know that it is intrenched deeply^ 
everywhere around us, in those old master passions of 
human nature, avarice, and appetite. These are its 
roots. Nearer the surface, we know that it is in- 
trenched in the license systems of thirty-three States 
of this Union, which give it the sanction and pro- 
tection of law. W'e know that it is intrenched 
in the revenue system of our general government, 
which has become a partner with it. W'e know that 
it is intrenched also in the hundreds of millions of 
dollars' worth of property invested in the business. 
We know that it has for generations been interwoven 
with our daily habits and social customs. And 
finally, in our day. we have seen it rise to the sur- 
face of affairs, thrust itself to the forefront of our 
politics, and through our defenseless and fraud- 
inviting caucus system, lay its hand, as slavery did 
in its day, upon both the old parties of the country. 

Need I tell you, my friends, that this great enemy 
which threatens anew the very life of the republic is 
the liquor traffic ? 

Look at the appalling figures. We spend in this 
land to-day twice as much for strong drink as for 
bread — drink that kills, instead of the bread which 
makes alive. We spend three times as much for 
drink as for all our clothing, and in a land of boasted 



446 LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 

light and culture, in the very blaze of this great nine- 
teenth century, we spend six times as much for de- 
basing, brutalizing drink as for all the education of 
our people in common school, college, and university ! 
And then, coming to the stupendous aggregate, we 
yearly sink in this vast sea of passion and appetite 
the enormous sum of nine hundred millions of dol- 
lars — a hundred millions more than we pay in this 
land of labor for all the labor in all the manufactur- 
ing establishments of the country ! Do you wonder, 
after this, that we should have a great labor question 
on our hands ? 

And this is our actual condition to-day, in country 
and city. Our young giant of a Republic struggling 
like Laocoon in the coils of the terrible serpent ; or, 
literally, staggering like a drunken man to his fall. 
God of mercy ! what a picture is that for the end of 
our first hundred years ! 

THREE CLASSES OF CITIZENS. 

Now, my friends, standing related to this terrible 
business, to this appalling state of affairs, there are 
three classes of citizens: — 

First, the criminal class, the men engaged in the 
business, and with these the morally indifferent, like 
the men in slavery times who did not care whether 
slavery was voted up or voted down ; second, the 
class for license and regulation^ for paltering, expedi- 
ency, and compromise ; and, third, the class for pro- 
hibition 2lX\A extirpation, — the class who are for the 
abolition and annihilation of the traffic. 



LE(iAL SUrrRESSIOX OI- THE LIQUOR TRAEKIC. 44'7 

THE IRREI'RESSmLE CONFLICT. 

Between these classes of men the clash of opinion 
has commenced ; agitation, discussion, have begun. 
Now, as never before, we are brought face to face 
with this question, and in every State of this great 
l^nion the liquor traffic, the gigantic criminal of our 
age, is being arraigned at the bar of public opinion 
and confronted with its black catalogue of crimes. 
The public conscience is being aroused, the public 
judgment is being convinced, the public heart is 
being touched. God has so made humanity, has so 
fashioned the consciences and the hearts of men, that 
they can not rest, they can not be silent in the pres- 
ence of a great wrong. The moral forces of the 
universe are stronger and more enduring than the 
elements. There can be no rest or peace for wrong 
and wickedness in this world. The tempests of 
righteous public wrath and indig.nation shall smite 
and blast them ; even the silent and gentle forces 
shall undermine them. Such is the eternal order of 
Providence. 

So, my friends, this great battle against the liquor 
traffic is on ; the "irrepressible conflict" has begun. 
It will continue until this great question is settled. 
To paraphrase the memorable words of Mr. Lincoln, 
in reference to slavery, our house divided against 
itself can not stand. We can not endure as a people 
half drunken and half sober. Either we shall prohibit, 
and so arrest the further spread of this liquor traffic, 
or its advocates will push it forward until it shall 
become alike lawful (and baneful) in all the States 
of this Union, old as well as new, North as well 
as South. 



448 LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIOUOR TRAFFIC. 

And a nation of drunkards can not be depended 
upon to maintain liberty on this continent. 

THE REMEDY — WHAT SHALL BE DONE ? 

The appeal is now made to all patriotic citizens : 
What shall be done.-* In view of this gigantic evil, 
and the rapid and startling inroads which it is mak- 
ing upon our national life, something must be done, 
and that soon. What shall it be } 

Now, my friends, one class, a very large class, and, 
I regret to say. including many intelligent and con- 
scientious men, says : Let us try license ; let us regu- 
late the traffic, and make it pay a revenue into the 
treasury to compensate for some of its loss and dam- 
age to society. It is a little suspicious that this view 
is heartily indorsed by the other class engaged in 
the business, and supposed to know what will help 
them ; but nevertheless some professedly temper- 
ance men continue to prate about the beauties of the 
license system as a remedy for the liquor traffic. 

But let no man be deceived in this matter. When 
we look this question squarely in the face, we shall 
find the truth to be that license is no remedy at all 
for this appalling evil, but rather a contrivance by 
and through which it is enabled to intrench itself in 
the respectability and protection of law. 

Now, my friends, not to go into the particulars 
and details of this great argument, — for I have not 
the time to-night, — there are, to my mind, two great 
and fundamental objections to the license system. 



LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 449 

WRONG IN PRINCIPLE. 

I say, first, it is wrong in principle, — from top to 
bottom, all through, high or low license, — completely 
and fundamentally wrong. Now, this whole system 
of license and regulation, as it is called, recognizes 
the right, the moral and legal right, of the traffic to 
live. It ought not to live, not a single day, nor hour, 
but to die, rather, and be swept from the earth. 
Why do I say this .-• — I say it because the traffic is an 
immoral and illegitimate business, an alien and an 
enemy among the industries, and ought to be made 
an outlaw. There is one great and sure test by 
which we can know a legitimate business ; there is a 
beautiful law which governs in this matter, — the law 
of the mutual assistance and dependence of all useful 
callings among men, the great law of the sympathy 
of the industries, if I may so call it. ^ Under this law 
the test is that every man who is engaged in a le- 
gitimate business, while prosecuting that business 
primarily for himself, and to better his own private 
fortune, is all the time helping his neighbors and the 
general public, helping to build up society about 
him. The artisan or mechanic who fashions the raw 
materials of nature into shapes of usefulness and 
beauty which minister to the convenience or the 
luxury of men ; the manufacturer who pays out his 
money to employ honest labor, and sends out his 
wares to the ends of the world to meet human wants 
and needs ; the tradesman who buys and sells in the 
open market, and thus meets a great public demand, 
— all these, not to multiply instances further, are 
serving the public while bettering their own for- 
29 



450 LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 

tunes. Now, you can not have too many mechanics 
in a town or city, if they can find work ; you can not 
have too many manufactories, if their goods and 
wares are ordered ; you can not have too many 
stores, if they are patronized. Enough of these 
make Chicagos and New Yorks and Londons. 

But how will this rule work when applied to the 
liquor traffic .'' Can't you have too many saloons ? 
Suppose a city has one hundred of these ; would it 
be best to have two hundred or four hundred .■' 
Would you build up a town on these .'' Would more 
patronage help the matter ? Suppose a city blessed — 
or rather cursed — with one hundred saloons should 
have the number quadrupled, until there should be a 
saloon to every hundred inhabitants, if you please, 
and all of them well patronized, would n't you expect 
to see the respectable, virtuous citizens of that town 
flee from it as from another Sodom .'* You know 
they would ; and this shows that the legitimate, 
inevitable effect of this traffic is not only not to build 
up, but to tear down and destroy society. 

Why, my friends, you might as well talk of found- 
ing the prosperity of a town or city upon smallpox 
or diphtheria as upon the liquor traffic. Would you 
license t/irsf ? Start not at the comparison. I do 
not exaggerate. These terrible scourges, dread as 
they are, are not, shall I say, a tenth part so destruc- 
tive to the human race as the liquor traffic. That 
great statesman, Mr. Gladstone, has said from his 
place in the British Parliament, that the traffic is a 
greater scourge to the English-speaking race of 
to-day than war, pestilence, and famine, combined, — 
those three great historic scourges of the human 



I,EGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 451 

race. And what father or mother but would rather 
have the fair boy cut off in the bloom and innocence 
of childhood — transplanted to the everlasting gar- 
dens, where he may walk a radiant angel until you 
meet him there — than see him grow up to manhood 
to be brutalized and degraded by drink, and then go 
down prematurely into the awful blackness of a 
drunkard's grave .-• What wife or child but would 
rather see the husband and father fall suddenly 
before that other terrible scourge — cut down in his 
strength of body and mind, strength of virtue and 
character, with all that precious inheritance of sweet 
and grateful memories left to his family^ — ^than see 
him the staggering, bloated, disfigured victim of 
drink, the manhood and the virtue all gone out of 
him ; useless to himself and to everybody else ; a 
wreck, a shame, an incumbrance of living death to 
his family ! O my friends, how terrible, how un- 
speakably awful is all this ; and where does it leave 
us, as a people, that we have such things to say ! 

No, no ; this terrible traffic is not a business, is 
not an industry to be protected, but a great public 
enemy, and criminal, and I denounce it as such. 
What is a criminal? What is a crime? What does 
Webster say ? 

A crime is " an act which violates a law, human or 
divine;" "which violates a rule of moral duty;'' "a 
public wrong?' What single element of criminality 
is wanting here ? 

And it is the first terrible count in the arraignment 
of the license system that it makes the State a part- 
ner in this crime. It makes the State say, " Pay your 
money, though coined from widows' tears and or- 



452 LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 

phans' rags and shame ; pay your money, though wet 
with the blood of tragedy and murder, into our treas- 
ury, and you may go on and prey upon society, de- 
stroy the home, and sap the foundations of liberty." 
I tell you, my fellow citizens, that this whole system 
is worse, is more criminal and infamous, than the cel- 
ebrated " indulgences " of Tetzel and Leo X, which 
called out that immortal protest from the fiery soul 
of Martin Luther. 

I tell you, my friends, that the licensing of such a 
traffic by the State for a few dollars of revenue is a 
gigantic public scandal and infamy. And as a reve- 
nue system it is a failure, a miserable failure. It costs 
three dollars in direct taxes, to say nothing about the 
rest of the account, to collect every vile dollar paid 
into the public treasury. The figures show this. We 
have, in the first place, a vast police force in all our 
cities to suppress disorder and keep the public peace. 
Nine tenths of all this disorder comes from the liquor 
traffic, the promoter of riots, and broils, and disturb- 
ance, and the people have to foot the bill for the 
police to keep it down. We build courthouses and 
jails, and maintain the vast machinery of our public 
law through which justice is administered and our 
law-breakers and criminals are punished. All this 
costs money, which the people have to pay in taxes, 
and it is the legitimate and natural result of the liq- 
uor traffic to breed law-breakers and criminals. And 
then there are our pauper system and our lunatics and 
insane to care for ; for all of which the people pay the 
bills in taxes. And it is the business of the liquor 
traffic to make paupers and lunatics. When the 
great stupid public have footed up all this account, 



LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 453 

and compared it with the license fees paid into the 
treasury, they will find, as the Irishman said, that 
they have " laid up a loss." 

Why, take the case of our general government. 
We get, it is true, nearly a hundred million of reve- 
nue every year from the traffic, but we suffer a bil- 
lion of waste and losses, waste of money and industry, 
direct : burying a yearly crop of sixty or seventy 
thousand drunkards, and endure besides consequen- 
tial damage and injury for which there can be no fig- 
ures and no computation in this world. And yet men 
talk about the "revenues "of this business, and so- 
called statesmen gravely propose to perpetuate this 
ghastly and unholy national prostitution by turning 
over this tainted and polluted price of blood and 
infamy to the States, to be divided among them for 
taxes and for education ! Heaven save us from such 
statesmen and such statesmanship ! 

HIGH LICENSE. 

Now, my friends, all I have said in opposition to 
this system applies to all license, high and low ; to 
the whole license system, root and branch, as wrong 
in principle and utterly pernicious. But I am aware 
that the cry of a large body of men now is that we 
must try high license. " High license ! " as though 
there were something very select and respectable in 
that term. None of your low license, if you please 
none of your disgustingly vulgar kind of license, but 
'■'■high license." Let me say right here, treating the 
subject seriously, and allowing for the good mo- 
tives of many misguided temperance men who talk 
this way, that the proposed remedy will not help the 



454 LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 

disease at all, — will not, as you say and doubtless 
hope, many of you, dry up or lessen the evils of the 
traffic. In the first place, it is open to the broad, 
general, and fundamental objections to the whole 
license system, which I have already made ; and it 
is open also to some further specific objections of 
its own. 

It will make a monopoly of the traffic. We have 
monopolies enough now. Possibly there may be less 
saloons, but there will be no less liquor sold. What 
restrictive power has high license .'' What single 
rumdrinker will it prevent from drinking ? Every- 
body will be able to get drink under high license as 
well as low license. The rumseller will be only too 
anxious to get his high license fee back, and the 
charge will not deter even the worst dram-drinker, 
who would pawn his wife's Bible for drink. 

But the high license fee will bribe the public to 
perpetuate the traffic under the miserably mistaken 
idea that the State can make money out of the liquor 
traffic. Men will be deceived into the idea, looking 
to only one side of the account, that it is a source of 
revenue. I have already demonstrated the fallacy 
of that conception. 

But I will tell you further, my friends, what high 
license will do ; it will make gilded and " respecta- 
ble " palaces of temptations for young men. This 
very talk about it by temperance and respectable 
men, who ought to know better ; this advocacy of it 
by fathers in the presence of their sons, as though it 
were a good thing, and even a temperance measure, 
will have the inevitable effect to make young men 
think that they can go with impunity into a " high " 



LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 455 

license saloon, when perhaps they would never think 
of going to a saloon at all under other circumstances^ 
This would be a natural result of the example and 
the teaching. I tell you it is our young men that 
we want to save. We don't want to set any gilded 
traps to tempt them. It is the first step toward 
ruin that needs to be guarded against. That not 
taken, all is well. It is not so much a matter for 
the confirmed drunkards ; it is not the low grog- 
geries which are so much to be feared. They will 
naturally only take those who are far gone on the 
road and perhaps already lost. 

But it is our young men, I repeat, that we must 
save — save from the open, lawful, respectable bar. 
We must have a crop of young men in this country, 
for the next generation, God-fearing and sober, if we 
would maintain free institutions and civil liberty on 
this continent. 

THE LICENSE SYSTEM HOLDS OUT NO HOPE 
OF IMPROVEMENT OR END. 

My second great objection to the license system 
shall be briefly stated. I charge that the system 
holds out no hope of improvement or end of the 
traflfic. And the evil is all the while increasing. 

So we have this terrible prospect. It is a mere 
question of avarice and appetite playing upon each 
other. Men will sell while men will drink, and there 
will be no end, unless it be found when we shall 
become not only a nation of drunkards, but a nation 
of paupers as well. For so long as the law sanctions, 
men will be found to sell as long as men can be 
found to drink and pay. 



456 LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 

So license is despair. It can not stem the swollen 
tide of intemperance, rising higher every day, but 
turns our prow toward Niagara and the inevitable 
catastrophe. 

THE REMEDY OF PROHIBITION. 

I have been giving you the principal grounds and 
reasons on which, to my mind, this whole license 
system is to be condemned. They involve a ques- 
tion of moral principle, and that can not be violated 
with impunity. It was the lofty declaration of that 
great philosophic statesman, Edmund Burke, that 
"that which is morally wrong can never be politi- 
cally right." Much less can we undertake to make 
politically right a matter like this, where the conse- 
quences are so lasting, so widespread and terrible. 

In my judgment there is but one remedy for the 
evils of intemperance in our land, and that is not a 
remedy — a so-called remedy — of paltering and 
compromise, but one which is radical and consistent 
with moral principle ; one which goes to the root of 
the whole matter —the universal a>id complete pi'ohi- 
bition and annihilation of the liquor traffic. 

I need not tell you that this great remedy is law- 
ful and constitutional. There is no question or diffi- 
culty of that kind in the way. All our great lawyers 
and jurists agree ; all our courts, from the highest to 
the lowest in the land, hold that, under the great 
police power lodged in a State, or government, the 
State may lawfully lay its heavy hand upon the 
liquor traffic to stay its evils, or wipe it out alto- 
gether. Your own great jurist, Roger B. Taney, 
though wrong, as the world now holds, in the Dred 



LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 457 

Scott decision, held and stated this view on the 
liquor traffic. So the way is open for the destruc- 
tion of the destroyer. 

Again, I hold that it is the natural, the legitimate, 
the sensible way of dealing with the question. No 
other way is sensible. Here is a great wrong and 
evil, which all good men, all good citizens, agree 
should be removed and abated as soon as pos- 
sible. How shall it be done .' Shall two temper- 
ance men agree that the curse should be removed, 
and then one of them immediately propose to remove 
it by licensing it .' to kill it by giving it the legal 
right to live ? Is that a sensible way of dealing with 
the question ? Is that the way men do in their fami- 
lies and their business with things that are wrong.-* 
Not if they are men of sense. A man of sense, in 
such cases, says, " That thing is wrong, and it must be 
stopped." If something goes' wrong at the house, 
''stop ity If in the store or the business, he does n't 
say, " Oh, yes, let it go on;" but," Stop it." That 
is the natural and sensible way of doing business. 
This liquor business doesn't want puttering and palter- 
ing and compromising with any longer. It wants 
to be stopped. 

THE ANGLO-SAXON WAV. 

I tell you, my friends, that this way of dealing 
with the question — this utter prohibition and extinc- 
tion of the traffic — is the Anglo-Saxon way ; a way 
that sturdy race has always had in dealing with great 
public wrongs. It is a way born in the very gristle 
and marrow of the race. Vou may see it all along 
the track of history for a thousand years. Look at 



458 LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 

England — look at our parent stock. Why, seven 
hundred years back in the history of this race in 
England, those sturdy old barons took that graceless 
and infamous king of theirs out into the mede, and 
told him he must stop his tyranny and his lawless- 
ness or they would hurl him from his throne. And 
the craven John submitted, and signed the great 
charter — the Magna CJiarta which is now the 
mighty bulwark of civil liberty in England and 
America. Come down that stream of English his- 
tory to the struggle between the Parliament and 
people of England and the tyrannical kings of the 
House of Stuart. Hampden and Cromwell, and 
those other mighty Englishmen of that day, said to 
their treacherous king, who pleaded his divine right 
to tyrannize over England, that he must stop his 
oppressions and his tyranny, and when he refused, 
and drew the sword, and plunged the nation into 
war, they fought him, and took him prisoner, tried 
and condemned him to death, and his royal head 
rolled from the block in obedience to the stern decree 
of that great Puritan race. 

If we turn to our own history we shall see our 
fathers of '76 saying to George HI and his ministers 
across the sea, ""You must stop this oppression, — 
this taxation without representation,^ or we '11 stop 
it for you." And when the king and ministers 
refused, they rose in rebellion, threw the tea over-r 
board in Boston Harbor, declared their independ- 
ence at Philadelphia, and under that immortal leader 
whose marble statue crowns your city, whose majes- 
tic face and figure I have seen looking down upon 
you from the serene blue heavens of this beautiful 



LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 459 

spring day, they fought seven years to lay the foun- 
dations of liberty and free government in this land. 
And still true to these great examples, and this great 
history of the race, the men of our time found a way 
— this same old way of prohibition — to stop slavery 
in its career, to kill it, and save the republic. 

Yes, prohibition is the right way, the sensible way, 
the effective way. It is approved on every principle 
of morals and of practical politics. Did you ever 
think of it, the license system itself approves of it, 
and adopts its great principle. Every license law 
I ever heard of prohibits the sale of liquor on certain 
days, as on Sundays, and holidays, and election days, 
and forbids the sale to certain classes, as young men 
under age, and common drunkards. Here is prohi- 
bition, pure and simple. Now I ask, in the name of 
reason and common sense, if the sale of intoxicating 
liquor is a good thing, why stop it at all ? And if it 
is a bad thing, why not stop it a// tJic tiuie Z It 
certainly is either a good thing or a bad thing. Do 
you know any reason, any good reason, in principle, 
I mean, why the law should thus discriminate.'' 

OBJECTIONS TO PROHIBITION. 

There is no good reason. But this inconsistency 
is on a par with the common stock objections which 
are always urged against prohibition. I shall not go 
into them at any length at all, only pause a moment 
to brush these intellectual cobwebs aside. 

And first, up pops some moral coward, and says, 
" YoH can't enforce pro/iibiiiony Who says you can't 
enforce law in this country ^ This is a government 
of law and the people, a government ruled by majori- 



460 LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 

ties, and when the people put their will into law, 
they have the power — the moral and the physical 
power — to enforce it. Look at what stands behind 
the Constitution and the statute in this land. First, 
the moral power of the sentiment, the consenting 
opinion which made the Constitution or the statute ; 
second, the whole police power and civil constabu- 
lary of the State ; and third, the entire military force, 
and power of the State ; and then back of all, if 
necessary, the army of the United States, to the last 
officer and the last man. Can't enforce the law ? 
What rumseller in Baltimore is going to head a 
rebellion against State and Union alike.-* Why, 
eleven States of this Union with eight millions of 
gallant men, once undertook to say that law should 
not be enforced, that the majority should not rule in 
this country, and even they failed. It took a great 
many lives, and a great deal of money to enforce 
law, but it was done, and that case ought to settle 
all such talk in this country. 

Somebody else cries out, " Prohibition don't pro- 
hibit." Who says it does n't .'' Why, some whisky let- 
ter writer, some irresponsible scribbler, or roving 
reporter, or general fault-finder in the interest of 
whisky. Who knows best .' Such as these, or the 
governors and officials of prohibition States, the 
responsible men on the ground, like that Kansas 
governor, whose eyes are now opened, like St. Paul, 
and whose official, sworn opinion and statement that 
it does prohibit has been read in your hearing from 
this platform to-night ? There is from every State 
where the law exists an overwhelming mass of such 
testimony as this, and it is simple effrontery and 



LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 4(J L 

* 

unmitigated dishonesty to urge against it such irre- 
sponsible and anonymous stuff and drivel. If prohi- 
bition did not prohibit, you would not hear so much 
about it, for the great mass of these objectors don't 
want it to prohibit, and that is what ails them. 

''Oh," says another, "it violates perso7ia/ liberty.'' 
Now, what do you mean by that t If you mean the 
degree of civil liberty enjoyed by a free white, — no, 
not that }iou\ but a free American citizen, white or 
black, — I answer that that, according to Hlackstone, 
is his natural liberty so far restrained as may be 
necessary for the good of society. And the good of 
society requires that he should not be permitted to 
sell poison for drink. That is the liberty of an 
American citizen in this great republic of ours. It 
may not be the kind of liberty that a Fiji Islander or 
a Digger Indian enjoys, but it does very well for us, 
and we shall have to stand it, rumsellers and all. 

But still we hear other objections. " Stijuptuary 
lazvsy Utterly without sense or reason. There is 
nothing " sumptuary " in prohibition at all. It does 
not pretend to interfere with the amount of expenses 
in the citizen's household, — the old and true mean- 
ing of a " sumptuar}' law," — but only says he shall 
not sell alcoholic poison to kill his neighbors and 
destroy society. That 's all there is to that objec- 
tion. "Business interests." I have already an- 
swered that point. A more absurd and monstrous 
scarecrow was never invoked to frighten the people 
and serve the de\il. The vast waste of money in 
this land for drink every year is the very thing that 
hurts all our business interests ; these swelling mil- 
lions are just what are needed to bring riches to all 
our industries and prosperity to all our homes. 



462 LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC 

But the last great objection is, that we are '• med- 
dling with other people's business." Yes, that is it, 
and that is just what we are doing, and propose to 
do, while "other people" have such a business. 
"Meddling!" Have we any right to ** meddle''? 

A noble ship is in mid-ocean, moving grandly over 
the waves, her sails all set, her officers and crew all 
on duty and watch, and her passengers happy and 
secure, — all on the upper deck, enjoying the wide 
and boundless prospect of wave and sky. Suddenly 
the startling cry is sounded," There are men down 
in the hold boring holes through the ship's bottom ! " 
In an instant, officers and crew and passengers rush 
down the ways, and there, sure enough, are men 
boring with augers through the ship's bottom t 
"Stop that! What are you doing? Don't you 
know that we shall all go to the bottom ? " " What 
business is that to you ? What are you 'meddling" 
with our business for? Aren't these our augers, 
and can't we use them ? '" How long do you think it 
would take that ship's crew to enforce prohibition in 
such a case ? 

Here we are : Our great ship of State, with officers 
and passengers, with a precious cargo of liberty and 
civilization, and proud and sacred - memories on 
board, the glorious stars and stripes at our masthead, 
sailing grandly over God's ocean of the nineteenth 
century. And down in the hold two hundred thou- 
sand liquor-sellers — three thousand, I am told, here 
in Baltimore — are boring holes in the ship's bottom, 
and, unless they are stopped, our mighty ship will 
begin to shiver soon through all her timbers, and 
lurch and sway from side to side, her proud flag will 



LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 463 

droop in despair from her bending masthead, and 
then she will make the terrible plunge down into the 
black waves forever ! No, no, my friends ! All these 
objections are miserable sophistries of the devil, 
every one of them. That 's the way slavery talked. 
We could n't save this country ; it was n't " constitu- 
tional." We had got to die, because we could n't 
" legally " live ! But we did n't conclude to die on a 
legal technicality, on a quibble of lawyers ; and we 
propose to save the country now, in spite of all these 
objections and sophistries. 

For, my friends, it is the highest province and duty 
of government to protect and defend and perpetuate 
civil society. A government that can't or won't do 
that is a miserable failure. There is inherent in such 
a government a great right of national self-defense 
— the first great right and duty to defend the 
nation's life at all hazards. TJiat 's the lesson we 
learned in the Civil war, and the danger is really as 
great now, if not so imminent, as then. It is only 
another kind of enemy that we have to meet. 

GREATNESS AND IMPORTANCE OF THE ISSUE. 

Again, my friends, look at our condition to-day in 
this country. Nine hundred millions every year for 
drink ! Why, we spend ten times as much every year 
for whisky and tobacco as for popular education and 
religion combined ! Great heavens, what madness is 
this ! Are we insane ? are W2 a nation of lunatics .'* 
Ought we not to have a guardian appointed over us.? 
Shall we send for the sultan of Morocco or the queen 
of Madagascar .' Sure I am that if any graceless pri- 
vate citizen should go on at this rate of extravagance, 



464 LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 

and appetite, and folly, his friends could get a guar- 
dian appointed over him in any surrogate's court in 
the State of Maryland. But we were born into this 
condition of things ; we have grown up in it, and we 
get used to it. If we in this country to-day knew 
nothing of drink and its terrible consequences, and 
could look for the first time across the border to 
another people cursed as we are, we would start back 
from the terrible sight as we would from the mouth 
of hell ! 

After our Michigan battle some of the papers, the 
liquor papers, talked about the decline of Puritanism 
in this country, and congratulated their readers on 
the fact. I do not wish for the return of many things 
in historical Puritanism. I do not want its narrow- 
ness and bigotry in religion, but I would like to see 
some of its conscience, some of its courage, some of 
its stern principle, and some of its simplicity and ab- 
stinence infused as a leaven into the cowardice and 
hypocrisy and corruption and appetite of our modern 
life. Something of the lofty spirit of noble John 
Hampden and stern Oliver Cromwell would not hurt 
us just now. 

HOW MUST PROHIBITION BE ACCOMPLISHED ? 

But you ask me how must prohibition be accom- 
plished ? I answer, through political action, the nat- 
ural way, after its order, in a government like ours. 
The time for temperance lectures is past ; it is the 
public's business now. Primarily and emphatically, 
it is a political question. What do politics mean .'' 
This is Webster's definition: — 

"Politics — the science of government — the part 



LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 465 

of ethics which consists in the regulation and govern- 
ment of a State or nation, for the preservation of its 
safety, peace, and prosperity ; the augmentation of 
its resources and strength, and the protectio)i of its 
citizens in their rights, with the preservation and 
improvement of their morals — ^ subject of vast ex- 
tent and importance." 

That 's " politics," not ward or saloon politics, but 
politics of the right kind, and I have quoted at length 
that you might see. 

Now, I say that every question which demands leg- 
islation, which demands constitutional provisions and 
statutory enactments, must in this country be a po- 
litical question, and the subject of political action. 
For ours is a government of laiv and the people. 

I tell you, my friends, that this liquor question is 
really now a great c[uestion of patriotism, a question 
how to save our country. I appeal to Republicans, 
to Democrats, to the men of all parties, to all patri- 
ots. Does it need that I should appeal to Christian 
men } And yet I am told that men who call them- 
selves Christians are found frequently on the side of 
the enemy in this great contest. Does it need that I 
should rebuke such as these .' Go look at the record ; 
look at the great book in which you profess to believe 
— that Old Testament record. From the awful 
Mount where the commands were delivered, to the 
sublime imprecations of the grand old prophets, it 
fairly flames and thunders with prohibition. "Woe 
unto him that putteth the bottle to his neighbor's lips 
to make him drunken." " Look not upon the wine 
when it is red ; for at the last it biteth like a serpent 
and stingeth like an adder." And if you turn to the 



4()r) LEGAL SUPPRESSION OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC. 

newer record, to the milder teachings of the great 
Founder, you shall find that he went into the temple 
and scourged with his lash of prohibition the offend- 
ers of his day — drove them from their infamous 
work. Hear him : " Woe unto you, hypocrites ! " 
" No drunkard shall enter the kingdom of heaven." 
No, you can find no justification or comfort in the 
record, and I have only words of indignation and 
contempt for any man who professes the religion of 
Jesus Christ and then serves the cause of whisky in 
this crisis. 

Fellow citizens, I appeal to you all. We must not 
give up or lose this great battle. We must not let it 
be said that after only a hundred years of liberty 
we fell as Rome did, and lost our great birthright of 
freedom in a mad revel of passion and appetite. Let 
no future Gibbon, in some distant land, and under 
some other civilization, write the sad story of the 
downfall of the great republic. Give us prohibition. 
Strike down this great enemy, the liquor traffic, and 
our young and still mighty nation, shaking off this 
terrible load, will bound forward in a splendid and 
triumphant career of greatness and glory. 



^CT 12 189i 



